Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Bruce Schneier
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American scientist Bruce Schneier.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense. But unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible.
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.
You can't defend. You can't prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond.
People don't understand computers. Computers are magical boxes that do things. People believe what computers tell them.
It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
Think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value of information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.
When a big company lays you off, they often give you a year's salary to 'go pursue a dream.' If you're stupid, you panic and get another job. If you're smart, you take the money and use the time to figure out what you want to do next.
There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing; you're screwed'.
If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
No one can duplicate the confidence that RSA offers after 20 years of cryptanalytic review.
There are two types of encryption: one that will prevent your sister from reading your diary and one that will prevent your government.
Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.
It's frustrating; terrorism is rare and largely ineffectual, yet we regularly magnify the effects of both their successes and failures by terrorizing ourselves.
The user's going to pick dancing pigs over security every time.
Choosing providers is not a choice between surveillance/not; it's just choosing which feudal lord gets to spy on you.
Privacy is a fundamental human need.
There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files.
Corporate and government surveillance aren't separate; they're an alliance of interests.
Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.
More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.
Computer security can simply be protecting your equipment and files from disgruntled employees, spies, and anything that goes bump in the night, but there is much more. Computer security helps ensure that your computers, networks, and peripherals work as expected all the time, and that your data is safe in the event of hard disk crash or a power failure resulting from an electrical storm. Computer security also makes sure no damage is done to your data and that no one is able to read it unless you want them to.
History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for error. Give yourself more security than you need today. When the unexpected happens, you'll be glad you did.
Buy American Doesn’t Sell Well Anymore Because It Means Give A Copy To The NSA
It is sort of interesting that in our society this days we are very quick to apply the term 'war' to places where thare are no actual wars, and loath to apply the term 'war' when we are actually fighting wars.
It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security.
If someone steals your password, you can change it. But if someone steals your thumbprint, you can't get a new thumb. The failure modes are very different.
Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that-either now or in the uncertain future-patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.
Terrorism is a crime against the mind. We win by refusing fear.
Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.
Only amateurs attack machines; professionals target people.
Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.
The more technological a society is, the greater the security gap is.
Surveillance is the business model of the Internet.
It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics.
The mantra of any good security engineer is: "Security is a not a product, but a process." It's more than designing strong cryptography into a system; it's designing the entire system such that all security measures, including cryptography, work together.
The fundamental driver in computer security, in all of the computer industry, is economics. That requires a lot of re-education for us security geeks.
If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security.
Hardware is easy to protect: lock it in a room, chain it to a desk, or buy a spare. Information poses more of a problem. It can exist in more than one place; be transported halfway across the planet in seconds; and be stolen without your knowledge.
The whole notion of passwords is based on an oxymoron. The idea is to have a random string that is easy to remember. Unfortunately, if it's easy to remember, it's something nonrandom like 'Susan.' And if it's random, like 'r7U2*Qnp,' then it's not easy to remember.
Surveillance of power is one of the most important ways to ensure that power does not abuse its status. But, of course, power does not like to be watched.
We no longer know whom to trust. This is the greatest damage the NSA has done to the Internet, and will be the hardest to fix.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. If an incident is in the news, we shouldn't worry about it. It's when something is so common that its no longer news - car crashes, domestic violence - that we should worry.
Microsoft made a big deal about Windows NT getting a C2 security rating. They were much less forthcoming with the fact that this rating only applied if the computer was not attached to a network and had no network card, and had its floppy drive epoxied shut, and was running on a Compaq 386. Solaris's C2 rating was just as silly.
The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want [...] Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help.
It doesn't matter how good the card is if the issuance process is flawed.
People often represent the weakest link in the security chain and are chronically responsible for the failure of security systems.
Security is a process, not a product.
Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
And honestly, if anyone thinks they can get an accurate picture of anyplace on the planet by reading news reports, they're sadly mistaken.
Something that looks like a protocol but does not accomplish a task is not a protocol—it’s a waste of time.
Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.
This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.
The question to ask when you look at security is not whether this makes us safer, but whether it's worth the trade-off.
Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail -- even if their attacks succeed.
Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.
Don't make the mistake of thinking you're Facebook's customer, you're not - you're the product.
Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four.
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