Schneier on Security

Electronic security expert Bruce Schneier’s studiously terrifying new book Click Here To Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, is a concerted counter-playbook to the end of human civilization, and the deaf ears it will fall upon have been deadened by two completely erroneous assumptions: that an unregulated Internet is better than a regulated one, and that Internet problems only affect people on the Internet.

Ninety percent of Schneier’s readers have more than one “smart” electronic device, be it a cellphone or a tablet or a laptop or a new-model automobile. And ninety percent of that ninety percent have the same personal password for all of those separate devices and haven’t changed that password in years. Virtually every single one of Schneier’s readers who choose to download his book instead of buying a printed copy in a bookstore leaves a wide and easily-followed data-trail back to themselves. Every one of Schneier’s readers who orders a printed copy of the book from online retailers like Amazon leaves an equally-accessible data-trail and never even thinks not to. Many of Schneier’s reader who decide to buy a printed copy in a bookstore will use some kind of electronic preferred-customer discount card, and the bookstore’s cash register system is electronically linked to its inventory system, and both systems have a D-grade security setup that a computer-literate 10-year-old could hack wide open. And a great many of those customers probably used the store’s free Wi-Fi while they were browsing, which means any malware prowling that Wi-Fi is now in their phone, which means it will be in their laptop later that evening when they plug their phone into it to charge…