News in the Category "Text"
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We Are in Early Years of International Cyber War Arms Race, Says Security Expert Bruce Schneier
Countries are not attacking each other but striking at the IT infrastructure of enterprises in rival states, says security pundit Bruce Schneier
Cyber attacks—such as that on Sony Pictures in 2014—suggest the world is in the early stages of a cyber war arms race.
So said Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Resilient Systems: “We are in the early years of a cyber war arms race.
“There is a lot of nation state rhetoric, and we are seeing a lot of nation state attacks against non nation states,” he told Infosecurity Europe 2015 in London.
Schneier cited North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures, China’s attack on Github and Iran’s attack on Saudi Aramco as examples.
“There is a lot of this back and forth, where countries are not attacking each other, but attacking companies in those countries—and I think we are going to see more of that,” he said…
EPIC Lifetime Achievement Award
Bruce Schneier received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Champions of Freedom Event.
Bruce Schneier on Privacy and the Data Free-for-All
Over the past two decades, few voices have shouted louder from the rooftops about global cybersecurity and digital privacy concerns than Bruce Schneier. He’s the CTO of Resilient Systems, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and has authored 14 books—his latest, Data and Goliath, was published in March.
As Facebook and Google have infiltrated our every waking moment, Schneier warns that these data giants, if left unchecked, could compromise the very principles of a democratic society. Web companies collect metrics like age, gender and social interests (to serve up better advertisements), while cellular networks track everyone’s geolocation with homing devices we call smartphones. As we’ve seen, smartphones are also powerful proxy surveillance tools for nosy governments…
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, by Bruce Schneier (Review)
Paul Bernal clicks with a maverick thinker who shows how business and governments are building a global surveillance network and how we can fight back
Investigating surveillance—whether corporate or governmental—can be a demoralizing process. Those performing that surveillance, from the US’ National Security Agency and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to Google and Facebook, are giants so overwhelmingly powerful that it seems too daunting to even contemplate taking them on. Their agendas may be even more terrifying: as Bruce Schneier observes, “The endgame of this isn’t pretty: it’s a global surveillance network where all countries collude to surveil everyone on the entire planet.” What’s more, he adds, the governments and the corporations are both in the same game: “It’s a powerful feedback loop: the business model supports the government effort, and the government effort justifies the business model.”…
Book Review: Data and Goliath, by Bruce Schneier
This book has been difficult to review. It has proved tricky not because I didn’t enjoy the book or because it was boring or badly written, but because it was so pertinent. Every time I went to write about it, a news story would emerge referencing the subject and I would find that my opinions of the news were influenced by the book and my opinions of the book were influenced by the news. This is an important topic and everyone should make up their own minds based on a decent knowledge and understanding of the issues. This book provides an excellent basis for a discriminating reader to do just that (as such, you should probably stop reading this review and just buy the book!)…
Book Review: Data and Goliath—You Don’t Have Any Secrets Anymore
Privacy is becoming an antiquated concept. In “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World” (ISBN: 9780393244816), security expert Bruce Schneier leads you through a labyrinth of surveillance that should scare the hell out of you.
Welcome to the NSA! We want to thank you for helping us with our collection of data about your work and personal habits. By using the computer, phone, public transportation, private vehicle, credit cards, library, banking systems, online shopping, or retail shopping, you are contributing to our data files. Wait, did we say files? We meant mega-warehouse. Either way, we here at the National Security Agency are pleased to get to know you…
Review: ‘Data and Goliath’ Delves into Brave New World of Big Data, Hacking and Cyber Crime
DATA AND GOLIATH. By Bruce Schneier. Norton. 365 pages. $27.95.
“Data and Goliath” is a broad-ranging assessment of our interconnected world, with all of its risks and hidden dangers, by foremost security expert Bruce Schneier. His book makes clear that we are living in the golden age of government and corporate surveillance and control. And that says nothing of the hackers and cyber criminals.
Schneier paints a dismal picture, but he offers several concrete suggestions to correct, or at least minimize, most of the problems. Take the issue of data brokers: If your business would like a list of people who fall in the category of “adults with senior parents” or “potential inheritor” or “diabetic households,” Acxiom can provide them. InfoUSA and Equifax can, too. Schneier points out that every day we allow such companies to spy on us in exchange for services. “If something is free, you are not the customer, you are the product,” he writes…
Bruce Schneier's Data and Goliath—Solution or Part of the Problem?
Think of some of the ways the Enlightenment helped advance the human individual. The ability to shape your identity. The ability to own and control your stuff. Economic autonomy. All three help to define the modern world, they’re ways we know that “now” is not like “before”. All three are founded on the sanctity of the individual. And all three are interlinked.
For example, our identity means little if you can’t express it creatively, by protecting your inventions and creations, and having some say over their use. You don’t have economic autonomy if an individual cannot negotiate what spoils come from exploiting the value of their work. Privacy is built on the same respect, and it’s a more modern and much more culturally specific—laws and norms come from what societies think and feel about the individual. Japanese and Chinese views on privacy are as different as German and American ideas are different…
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (Review)
“We may not like to admit it, but we are under mass surveillance.” So says Bruce Schneier, in his book Data and Goliath, for a popular audience. Schneier is a well-known writer in cryptography, and more recently a public figure in discussions of computer and network security.
The first fifth of Data and Goliath establishes his thesis: we are entering a world of ubiquitous surveillance, by both governments and businesses. He presents numerous anecdotes and stories, many from the Snowden documents (where we learned of the many forms of electronic data collection used by the NSA) and others from the popular press (e.g., the family that found out about their daughter’s pregnancy by the targeted advertising she was receiving). The second fifth explains what is at stake: limits to our freedom of expression (for fear of being attacked with our own secrets), chilling effects on expressions of dissent, discrimination in commercial dealings, as well as a host of abuses. For example, the backdoor built by Ericsson into Vodafone products to support legal wiretaps was abused by unknown third parties in 2004 and 2005 to wiretap members of the Greek government. But surveillance is not all bad: the phone company needs to monitor the location of your mobile phone to direct calls to you…
Identifying Perpetrators of Cyberattacks "Getting Tougher"
Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly challenging as identifying attackers by their weaponry is difficult to their invisible nature wherein attacks can be launched by a group of hacktivist or sponsored by a nation, according to an expert.
Bruce Schneier, a leading voice on cybersecurity, said a majority of organisations and individuals use the same run-of-the-mill ‘warlike weaponry’ at a time when the attackers are largely unknown, cybercrime is becoming more difficult to combat.
While the IT security industry knows how to deal with high volume, low-focus attacks, security professionals must be resilient and ensure better management of incident responses in order for organisations to thrive even in the face of a cyberattack, he said…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.