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> If there's anything we've seen, over and over again, it's that theoretical and infeasible attacks eventually become, in order: In general, yes it's always good to keep in mind that just as technology progresses exponentially, technological attacks also progress exponentially. BUT, theoretical attack -> weaponized attack is hardly an axiom. To take a page out of history which I believe is apropos, let us recall the old myth of recovering data from an erased hard drive. Way back in yonder years it was widely believed that three letter agencies could take any hard drive that had been erased, and recover all the data by carefully analyzing the residual magnetic flux. A single erase, the theory went, wasn't enough to fully wipe the magnetic signal. The idea was so pervasive that security obsessed peoples would wipe their drives 6, 7, maybe even 8 times just to be sure. That'll stop those three letter agencies! Well, as time went on it turned out the theoretical attack became less plausible and less feasible! We have no evidence that such a technique was _ever_ used. And while, in theory, it _may_ have been possible when the myth started, the relentless march of platter density rendered it less and less feasible as time went on. It's hard to know what attacks will follow the exponential curve upward towards weaponization, and which will follow it downward to obscurity. Best to just keep your wits about you, I say. |