In contrast, I think they're getting progressively more and more useful in light of an increasingly larger and more automatedly hostile world network.
I imagine in the 1970s there weren't a whole lot of hacks that began with "scan the entirety of ARPANET to find a few vulnerable machines, then apply vulnerability."
>I imagine in the 1970s there weren't a whole lot of hacks that began with "scan the entirety of ARPANET to find a few vulnerable machines, then apply vulnerability."
My point was that the economics that justified 80s worms didn't exist in the 70s and earlier. There simply weren't enough systems networked to make an automated attack preferable over a bespoke, single-system approach.
And extrapolate that change into the future with more and more machines of standardized config being connected to the internet... and automated attack and use becomes more and more attractive. Which means prevention of automated attack should become more useful.
I imagine in the 1970s there weren't a whole lot of hacks that began with "scan the entirety of ARPANET to find a few vulnerable machines, then apply vulnerability."