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Bruce Schneier on His New Book, a Hacker’s Mind
GrowthPolicy: I’d like to talk about your brilliant, and timely, new book, A Hacker’s Mind. In the book’s introduction, you write: “Security technologists look at the world differently than most people. When most people look at a system, they focus on how it works. When security technologists look at the same system, they focus on how it can be made to fail.” Tell our readers what first made you interested in the psychology of security technologists and hackers? In other words, what is the origin story of this book?
Bruce Schneier: These threads have been percolating in my head for a while now. I started writing about the psychology of security around 2008. That quote is something I have been saying for decades. The notions of socio-technical systems and how they can be attacked are just as old…
Hacking Procedure
A long time ago I joined Bruce Schneier on a panel on cyber security. I spoke on legal issues, developing a theme on self-defense which I later turned into a paper which won a little prize. Schneier was the real expert though, knowledgeable not just on technical details, the state of the art, but also the human factor and organizational causes of insecure computer systems. He’s since come out with a series of books on computer security, privacy, and related issues, and publishes a fairly regular “Crypto-Gram” newsletter.
Hacker’s Mind
Schneier’s latest book is “A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back.” This plays off the old notion of the hacker—the one I grew up with—as one who delights in understanding and manipulating systems to generate unexpected results- or at least results unintended by the system’s developer. A hacker is not a crook, but an exploder of limits. “Hacks follow the rules of a system but subvert their intent,” Schneier writes in his March 15, 2023 Crypto-Gram. Hacks aren’t necessarily illegal, although some are. Some are normalized and eventually accepted as a feature of the system. Banks that play fast and loose with reserve requirements might lead Congress to make the practice illegal (or the opposite: Congress might bail out the banks and allow bankers to keep their bonuses). Tax loopholes which plainly subvert the public intent of the tax system are often subsumed as an acceptable practice…
Audio: Is the Future Secure?
Listen to the Audio on TheFuturists.com
This week on The Futurists we get into the future of cybercrime and personal security in the smart world with renowned “security guru” Bruce Schneier. The author of over a dozen books (his latest bestseller being A Hacker’s Mind), Lecturer on Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Congressional advisor and Media personality. Will AI and Quantum kill passwords? How secure will your DNA records be? The answers might surprise you.
Audio: Is This A Hack? Beating The Customer Service Phone Line. Bruce Schneier, Author of “A Hacker’s Mind”
Listen to the Audio on SoundCloud.com
What is hacking? We asked Bruce Schneier, New York Times best-selling author of “A Hacker’s Mind, which answers the question. In this episode, we cover an “ingenious hack,” according to The Daily Mail, that “helps callers bypass the endless automated questions now used by most major firms’ helplines and get straight through to a human being.”
Audio: No Name Podcast with Bruce Schneier
Listen to the Audio on NoNamePodcast.org
Bruce Schneier spoke with Ruslan Kiyanchuk on the No Name Podcast.
Audio: Is This A Hack? Generating Income From Your Home. Bruce Schneier, Author of “A Hacker’s Mind”
Listen to the Audio on SoundCloud.com
What is hacking? We asked Bruce Schneier, New York Times best-selling author of “A Hacker’s Mind,” which answers the question. In this episode, we cover the phenomenon known as “house hacking,” which is—according to an article from Rocket Mortgage—“a modern lifestyle choice that borrows heavily from old-school ways and has been reimagined with the help of modern home-sharing platforms.”
Bruce Schneier Wants to Recreate Democracy
Arguing that American democracy has been hacked, the computer security expert doesn’t want to just fiddle on the margins when it comes to re-envisioning what a new 21st-century American democracy should look like.
Like many people cooped up at home during COVID-19, Bruce Schneier had a pandemic project. In this case, it was a new book called A Hacker’s Mind, which encourages readers to apply the hacker mentality to our various social, political, economic, and legal systems. Schneier’s work on the book sparked deeper thinking about the suitability of our centuries-old democratic processes and institutions and whether they were still up to the task in our ever-increasing polarized and fractured political climate.
“Democracy has been hacked, mostly for the worse,” Schneier, a computer security specialist and privacy expert who is a faculty affiliate at the Ash Center, is quick to note. “Our democracy in the United States is really just not suited to the task anymore.” But if American democracy is no longer up to snuff in Schneier’s mind, the question quickly arises: What should a new American democracy look like?…
Audio: Thought Leadership: Bruce Schneier on ‘A Hacker’s Mind’
Listen to the Audio on VoiceAmerica.com
Welcome to Cyber Security America, the podcast where we delve deep into the world of cybersecurity and provide insights on past trends, current challenges, and areas for improvement. Our goal is to help you stay informed and prepared for the next cyber threat. In this episode, we have a very special guest, Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned security technologist, known as a “security guru” by The Economist. With over a dozen books and hundreds of articles and academic papers under his belt, Bruce is a true legend in the information security field. He’s also the author of the latest book, “A Hacker’s Mind,” where he takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society. During our conversation, Bruce provides us with valuable insights on the current state of cybersecurity. He discusses the impact of coordinated takedowns by federal forces on ransomware actors, and how less payment transactions on the blockchain related to ransomware actors is a promising sign. He also highlights an emerging threat, Black Lotus, and shares his thoughts on how artificial intelligence thinking like a hacker could be catastrophic. This episode is packed with expert tips and lessons learned. So tune in now to Cyber Security America and join the conversation…
Audio: Is This a Hack? Theme Park Rides. Bruce Schneier, Author of “A Hacker’s Mind”
Listen to the Audio on SoundCloud.com
What is hacking? We asked Bruce Schneier, New York Times best-selling author of A Hacker’s Mind, which answers the question. In this episode, we cover a viral story from the New York Post, in which two parents “take matters into [their] own hands,” for their son, who is too short for several theme park rides, by crafting a special pair of shoes that made him taller.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.