security

• Note that I hold the single-author record for total CERT advisories, proving that in my copious youth I knew how to sling code but not how to manage risk.

  — Paul Vixie

• Stolen digital certificates and DNS poisoning make a lethal cocktail.

  — Newton Lee

• Neither Sherlock Holmes nor James Bond can stop data breaches without the cooperation and vigilance of organizations and individuals in cyberspace.

  — Newton Lee

• Rule 1 of cryptanalysis: check for plaintext.

  — Robert Morris

• Security is like Tetris: Your successes disappear but your failures pile up.

  — Mikko Hyppönen

• It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security.

  — Bruce Schneier

• When you say I don’t care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don’t care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write.

  — Edward Snowden

• Deadly weapons as big as a missile-equipped drone and as small as a .50-caliber bullet are now under software control, which could be disastrous if they were hacked.

  — Newton Lee

• Well-designed security systems fail gracefully.

  — Bruce Schneier

• Can I just once again state my love for it and hope it gets merged soon? Maybe the code isn't perfect, but I've skimmed it, and compared to the horrors that are OpenVPN and IPSec, it's a work of art.

  — Linus Torvalds

• The press, television, and movies make heroes of vandals by calling them whiz kids.

  — Ken Thompson

• When the X.500 revolution comes, your name will be lined against the wall and shot.

  — John Gilmore

• The Internet is like a vault with a screen door on the back. I don't need hammers and bombs to get in when I can walk in through the door.

  — William R. Cheswick

• If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.

  — Phil Zimmermann

• When my mother gets a prompt 'Do you want to download this?' she's going to say yes. It's disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools [in Internet Explorer] with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault.

  — Bruce Schneier

• Our examination of computer viruses leads us to the conclusion that they are very close to what we might define as "artificial life." Rather than representing a scientific achievement, this probably represents a flaw in our definition.

  — Gene Spafford

• Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.

  — Bruce Schneier

• More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.

  — Bruce Schneier

• It is not a question of privacy against security. It's a question of freedom against control.

  — Mikko Hyppönen

• Every bit of freedom that a designer has for creativity and good is also freedom for abuse. That’s true not just on the web, but in every single aspect of the online world. (Scott, Why The Web Is Such A Mess, 23 November 2020)

  — Tom Scott