Simply put New is a very relative word. New to whom? And how do you prove that something new is new indeed? You cannot. Perhaps you can suggest that something is new as nothing like it has been documented before, but again this is very subjective.

You often see rants about what is new and what is old in the security scene: underground and aboveground. Some people will complain that nothing new has been discovered when a presumably new type of vulnerability/research is released. Others will simply take it as new without even questioning it and essentially start a hype.

Perhaps new should be changed with fashionable. Like in the fashion business new things are often well forgotten old things, i.e. ideas always circulate. And new things are simply not possible without the help of old things because we require access to technology, whether it comes in terms of knowledge or tools, to build them. In that respect nothing new is actually new.