News in the Category "Articles"
Page 12 of 21
Former DHS/NSA Official Attacks Bruce Schneier With Bizarre, Factually Incorrect, Nonsensical Rant
Excerpt
Over the years, at times, I’ve seen people criticize Bruce Schneier for perhaps getting more publicity than other security researchers, but it’s rare to see people question his knowledge. The complaints often appear to stem more out of jealousy than anything else. But, I’ve never seen anything quite as ridiculous as this “CNN iReport” by Richard Marshall and Andre Brisson, which appears to be a blatant hatchet job attack on Schneier that is at times incomprehensible, at times factually incorrect and bizarre throughout. Marshall is a former NSA and DHS “cybersecurity” expert, but he’s now the CEO of “Whitenoise Labs,” (something …
NSA and the Murky Relationship Between Contractors, Government Secrets and Journalism
Excerpt
National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander this week defended the private sector’s cooperation with the agency’s electronic surveillance programs, telling Congress the companies involved are being punished in the media for meeting legal obligations under U.S. law and helping to save lives.
‘We have compelled industry to help us…by court order,’ said Alexander, during testimony Oct. 29 before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. ‘And what they’re doing is saving lives’ in the U.S. and around the world. ‘And it’s the right thing to do,’ Alexander said…
If Bruce Schneier Ran the NSA, He'd Ask a Basic Question: "Does It Do Any Good?"
Ars asks a tech and legal all-star team how to fix America's security state.
Excerpt
For the last two months, we’ve all watched the news about the National Security Agency and its friends over at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which approves secret orders on behalf of the NSA and other spy agencies. But more often than not, a lot of these articles take the same basic structure: documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden show X, and then privacy advocates and civil libertarians decry X for Y reason.
That now raises the question, what would these privacy advocates do if they were put in charge of the NSA and the FISC? Or more specifically, what changes would they immediately enact at those two opaque institutions?…
The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition
Excerpt
Technology expert Bruce Schneier has been blogging about security since 2004. If the subject was ever a niche, those days are long gone. His work touches on vital issues of safety and privacy at home, out in the world and, of course, on computers and other gadgets. Many of his posts simply point you towards items elsewhere—and he’s so important a figure in his field that the mere fact that Bruce Schneier found an article to be worthwhile is a significant endorsement.
Security guru: FBI Internet-Tapping Good for Criminals, Bad for Everyone Else
If you’re looking for more evidence that politicians don’t get technology, look no further than the FBI’s proposal to make Internet communications easier to wiretap. Specifically, the FBI wants to force companies to design their email, IM, VoIP, and other Internet-based communication products such that law-enforcement agents can eavesdrop on conversations—naturally, in the name of collecting evidence against evil-doers.
Although the plan reportedly has support from the Obama Administration, it doesn’t have the backing of a guy who knows a thing or two about security: …
Schneier and Zittrain on Digital Security and the Power of Metaphors
Excerpt
Bruce Schneier is one of the world’s leading cryptographers and theorists of security. Jonathan Zittrain is a celebrated law professor, theorist of digital technology and wonderfully performative lecturer. The two share a stage at Harvard Law School’s Langdell Hall. JZ introduces Bruce as the inventor of the phrase ‘security theatre’, author of a leading textbook on cryptography and subject of a wonderful internet meme.
The last time the two met on stage, they were arguing different sides of an issue—threats of cyberwar are grossly exaggerated—in an Oxford-style debate. Schneier was baffled that, after the debate, his side lost. He found it hard to believe that more people thought that cyberwar was a real threat than an exaggeration, and realized that there is a definitional problem that makes discussing cyberwar challenging…
Bruce Schneier: "We Live in a Feudal Security World"
We live today in a “feudal security world”, says internationally renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier.”
We pledge our allegiance to the service providers—the likes of Google, Facebook – and expect them to provide us with security in return—akin to serfs and peasants paying tribute to their lords in the form of personal data, says Schneier, the author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive, and chief security technology officer at BT.
“What I am seeing is a shift in power on the internet, that we generally have less control over our IT infrastructure, our products, our user devices, our services. “We basically have to trust our vendors,” he says. “We just don’t have the ability to control security or configuration the way we did when we owned and controlled the platforms…
The Compulsion to Share
Type ‘security expert’ into Google and the third result is Schneier on Security, a blog written by Bruce Schneier, the author of several books and chief security technology officer at BT.
The blog is also the top Google result for ‘security blogger’ and No. 7 for ‘computer security expert,’ despite the fact that Schneier doesn’t describe himself as an expert. (Qualifier: Google customizes results to the user, so your mileage may vary.)
It gets more interesting when you look at references to Bruce Schneier in media outlets: 175 mentions in The New York Times, 146 in The Wall Street Journal and almost 400 each in Computerworld and InformationWeek. All this in a market that is one of the most information-saturated in the technology sphere…
Security Expert: Trusting Service Providers With Security Is Dangerous
In the days of feudalism, serfs and minor lords pledged allegiance to the king and received protection in return. As long as the king held up his end of the bargain, the system worked. If he didn’t, the system would crumble, as it eventually did in Europe around the 15th century.
Bruce Schneier, CTO of BT Managed Security Solutions, sees the feudalism dynamic happening today on the Web, where users of social networking and other online services must blindly trust that the companies providing those services are paying enough attention to security. And given the power these firms wield, that is by no means a safe assumption…
Here's How Hackers Took Over the Burger King Twitter Account
Burger King and Jeep both saw their Twitter accounts get hacked this week.
How and why does this happen?
Bruce Schneier is a revered computer security expert, prominent for his thoughts on the intersection of technology, security, and trust.
He was kind enough to fill us in on the details surrounding how hacks like these are possible.
How a Twitter account gets hacked
A person attempting to break into an account isn’t hunched over a keyboard typing guessed password after guessed password until something works. He’ll use a password cracker.
A password cracker is a piece of software that employs a technique to guess passwords much more quickly than a human ever could. The two most common approaches are the “brute force method” and the “dictionary method.” While the dictionary method simply tries every word in a dictionary until it works, the brute force method tries every possible combination of characters (including numbers and punctuation) until something works…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.