Bruce Schneier Quotes
born 1963 United States
Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer.
- United States
- Technology writers
Also known as: Schneier, Bruce
Random Bruce Schneier quote
19 quotes
Only amateurs attack machines; professionals target people.
It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
Secrets and Lies (2000)
It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security.
Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
Attacks always get better, they never get worse.
Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.
The lesson here is that it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics. Encryption is too important to be left solely to governments.
More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.
Against the average user, anything works; there's no need for complex security software. Against the skilled attacker, on the other hand, nothing works.
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.
Well-designed security systems fail gracefully.
In China, programs have to be certified by the government in order to be used on computers there, which sounds an awful lot like the Apple store.
A few years ago I heard a quotation, and I am going to modify it here: If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
We can't keep weapons out of prisons; we can't possibly expect to keep them out of airports.
Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important: to convince the loser.
Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. Here's an example. Go to Amazon.com. Buy a book without using SSL. Watch the total lack of chaos.
Not being angels is expensive
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.