I may be waaaay off here, but the internet as it exists is pretty much built on DNS, isn’t it? I mean, the whole idea of DARPANet back in the 60s and 70s was to build a robust, redundant, and self-healing network to survive nuclear armageddon, and except when humans f it up (intentional or otherwise), it generally does what it says on the tin.

Now, there’s arguments to beade about securing the protocol, but to rip and replace the routing protocols, I think you’d have to call it something other than the Internet.

I had Ubiquiti for a long time, even deployed 50 at my work network. Switched to TP-Link Omada, much cheaper Ap’s, super cheap hardware controller (software option), and much more stable, longer-lifetime software/firmware. (updates are like 2x/yr - ish). The interface is so similar to UniFi that it is hard to tell who ripped the other off.

Looking at specific vulnerabilities or breaches in a complex, interconnected system wouldn’t be particularly helpful in the context I was aiming for. I was thinking more along the lines of generational education in secure practices. Thinking and acting securely on a global scale to ingrain that mindset in future engineers. Security and ethics courses for high school and engineering college undergrads.

Of course, this all comes down to market forces. Manufacturers don’t have an incentive to do more than the bare minimum QA…

Heres an example of the sorry current state: my son just graduated from a Big 10 school with a degree in robotics and electronics engineering. It was very heavy in programming. He’s continuing on to a Ph.D program. He had exactly ONE lecture regarding secure coding and programming ethics. He is required to have no more. In a 7-8 year program, 1.5 hours of formal instruction on secure coding practices and ethics.

No matter what tool is used, if you don’t start from a foundation of security first, your code will not be inherently secure. I can accept that some tools have more guardrails than others, but we are not teaching foundational security skills and principles, privacy and ethics even at the college level. Until that is addressed at a large scale and applied at the lowest layers to the silicon, we’re doomed to this security hell hole dystopia we’re living in.