Is developer education a lost cause?

["Kenneth R. van Wyk" <Ken () KRvW com>]

Hi all,

Over on the Full-Disclosure mailing list, there was a recent thread that 
questioned whether trying to educate the end consumer of PC products is a 
lost cause.  Malicious software has managed to dupe unsuspecting users into 
doing things that security professionals have frowned on for many years, 
despite untold numbers of news stories warning users about the problems.  
To many, it would appear that the computing masses are...
<diplomatic>knowledge resistant</diplomatic>.  :-)

Well, if things are really that bad for the end consumer, how does the 
situation bode for the average software developer?  That is, we've all seen 
untold numbers of news stories about buffer overflows and the like.  Why is 
it that we don't seem to be making much progress in stamping out these 
things?  (I should note that I am not including present company here on 
SC-L in this question, since we're presumably all here because we're 
concerned enough about secure application development that we want 
to discuss and learn with other like-minded folk.)

Is developer education a lost cause?  

I happen to think that it isn't, but that opinion isn't shared by everyone. 
Indeed, a few of the people that I talked with about participating here on 
SC-L were relucant because they were fed up with trying to educate the 
masses.  

If you agree that it isn't a lost cause, then what more {c|sh}ould be done?  
That said, how do we measure or even know if things are improving?  By the 
number of vulnerability advisories per month?  (I hope not.)  

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk