Flaming headlines

Readers of this blog know that I can't miss a chance to ridicule hyperbolic headlines. Mocana has a great blog on the "Security news for the Internet of things" but they sometimes overstate the case.

The headline of today's Mocana post is "Researcher: Flame’s Crypto Collision Discovery Cost At Least $200K". The source Mocana gives for this assessment is an Ars Technica post. Reading that post one finds the following statement:

Sotirov said the $200,000 estimate is likely the maximum cost of the computing power that would have been required when Flame was likely being designed. He held out the possibility that the collision attack may have cost much less if the researchers figured out techniques that were less computing intensive.

Notice how Sotirov's "maximum cost" of $200K became "At Least $200K"? Nuff said.