The whole notion of passwords is based on an oxymoron. The idea is to have a random string that is easy to remember. Unfortunately, if it's easy to remember, it's something nonrandom like 'Susan.' And if it's random, like 'r7U2*Qnp,' then it's not easy to remember.
Interpretation
Passwords are inherently paradoxical, aiming to be both random and memorable but failing at one of these aspects.
This quote by Bruce Schneier highlights the fundamental contradiction in the concept of passwords. While they are designed to be secure through randomness, true security often requires making them complex and difficult to remember, leading to a paradox where easier-to-remember passwords compromise security and truly secure ones are forgettable.
In practice
Discussing cybersecurity during a tech seminar.
History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for error. Give yourself more security than you need today. When the unexpected happens, you'll be glad you did.
This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.
It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
You can't defend. You can't prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing; you're screwed'.
The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.
Our values are that we do think that people have a right to privacy. And that our customers are not our products.
We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.
I'm astonished at how readily a great many people I know, young people, have accepted a reduced economic prospect and limited freedoms in any substantial sense, and basically traded them for being able to screw around online.
I have seen women who are very interested in tech finish their graduate or undergraduate degrees, but then choose not to pursue a career in tech because they're not sure they want to spend the next 20-30 years in an industry that's very male dominated.
You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.
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