In nature, prey animals will sometimes jump when they spot a predator[1]. One of the explanations is that this is the animal communicating to the predator that it is a healthy prey animal that would be hard to catch and therefore the predator should choose to chase someone else.
I think we can kind of view obscurity in the same way. It's a way to signal to a predator that we're a hard target and that they should give up.
Of course in the age of automation, relying on obscurity alone is foolish because once someone has automated an attack that defeats the obscurity, then it is little or no effort for an attacker to bypass it.
Of course, sprinkling a little bit of obscurity on top of a good security solution might provide an incentive for attackers to go someplace else. And I can't help but think of the guy who was trying to think of ways to perform psychological attacks against reverse engineerers [2].
I think we can kind of view obscurity in the same way. It's a way to signal to a predator that we're a hard target and that they should give up.
Of course in the age of automation, relying on obscurity alone is foolish because once someone has automated an attack that defeats the obscurity, then it is little or no effort for an attacker to bypass it.
Of course, sprinkling a little bit of obscurity on top of a good security solution might provide an incentive for attackers to go someplace else. And I can't help but think of the guy who was trying to think of ways to perform psychological attacks against reverse engineerers [2].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlUe0TUHOIc