[mschwaig]

I think as AI gets smarter, defenders should start assembling systems how NixOS does it.

Defenders should not have to engage in an costly and error-prone search of truth about what's actually deployed.

Systems should be composed from building blocks, the security of which can be audited largely independently, verifiably linking all of the source code, patches etc to some form of hardware attestation of the running system.

I think having an accurate, auditable and updatable description of systems in the field like that would be a significant and necessary improvement for defenders.

I'm working on automating software packaging with Nix as one missing piece of the puzzle to make that approach more accessible: https://github.com/mschwaig/vibenix

(I'm also looking for ways to get paid for working on that puzzle.)

[XorNot]

Nix makes everything else so hard that I've seen problems with production configuration persist well beyond when they should because the cycle time on figuring out the fix due to evaluations was just too long.

In fact figuring out what any given Nix config is actually doing is just about impossible and then you've got to work out what the config it's deploying actually does.

[mschwaig]

Yes, the cycle times are bad and some ecosystems and tasks are a real pain still.

I also agree with you when it comes to the task of auditing every line of Nix code that factors into a given system. Nix doesn't really make things easier there.

The benefit I'm seeing really comes from composition making it easier to share and direct auditing effort.

All of the tricky code that's hard to audit should be relied on and audited by lots of people, while as a result the actual recipe to put together some specific package or service should be easier to audit.

Additionally, I think looking at diffs that represent changes to the system vs reasoning about the effects of changes made through imperative commands that can affect arbitrary parts of the system has similar efficiency gains.

[xeonmc]

Sounds like it’s a gap that AI could fill to make Nix more usable.

[cogogo]

From a security perspective I am far more worried about AI getting cheaper than smarter. Seems like a tool that will be used to make attacking any possible surface more efficient at scale.

[nradov]

Sure, but we can also use AI for cheap automated "red team" penetration tests. There are already several startups building those products. I don't think either side will gain a major advantage.

[landtuna]

This could be worse, too. With more machines being identical, the same security hole reliably shows up everywhere (albeit not necessarily at the same time). Sometimes the heterogeny impedes attackers.

[elnerd]

We soon will have to implement paradoxes in our infrastructure.

[quinnjh]

model based deception is being researched and implemented in high stakes OT environments, so not far from your suggestion!