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If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.

Bruce Schneier

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Bruce Schneier
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 15
Computer Scientist
Cryptographer
Mathematician
Physicist
Writer
New York City
New York
Technology
Understanding
Understand
Problem
Cryptography
Think
Solve
Thinking
Computer
Problems
Security

More quotes by Bruce Schneier

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If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security.
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The user's going to pick dancing pigs over security every time.
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There are two types of encryption: one that will prevent your sister from reading your diary and one that will prevent your government.
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The more technological a society is, the greater the security gap is.
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Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.
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There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
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It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws we need to protect ourselves with mathematics.
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When my mother gets a prompt 'Do you want to download this?' she's going to say yes. It's disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault.
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The question to ask when you look at security is not whether this makes us safer, but whether it's worth the trade-off.
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A colleague once told me that the world was full of bad security systems designed by people who read Applied Cryptography
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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.
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ID can be hijacked, and cards can be faked. All of the 9/11 terrorists had fake IDs, yet they still got on the planes. If the British national ID card can't be faked, it will be the first on the planet.
Bruce Schneier
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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.
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I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing you're screwed'.
Bruce Schneier
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But in this country, while you have to be competent to pull off a terrorist attack, you don't have to be competent to cause terror. All you need to do is start plotting an attack and - regardless of whether or not you have a viable plan, weapons or even the faintest clue - the media will aid you in terrorizing the entire population.
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Privacy is a fundamental human need.
Bruce Schneier
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Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.
Bruce Schneier
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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.
Bruce Schneier
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People often represent the weakest link in the security chain and are chronically responsible for the failure of security systems.
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Why is it that we all - myself included - believe these stories? Why are we so quick to assume that the TSA is a bunch of jack-booted thugs, officious and arbitrary and drunk with power? It's because everything seems so arbitrary, because there's no accountability or transparency in the DHS.
Bruce Schneier