Gene Spafford Quotes

In some ways, you can think of end-to-end encryption as honoring what the past looked like.

We all love privacy. We all care about public safety. And none of - at least people that I hang around with, none of us want back doors. We don't want access to devices built-in in some way.

Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. Here's an example. Go to Amazon.com. Buy a book without using SSL. Watch the total lack of chaos.

By leaning on companies, by leaning on infrastructure providers, by leaning on researchers, graduate students, post-docs, even undergrads, to look at the challenges having an untrusted internet, where we have to put our communications on wires that are owned by a phone company that we can't trust, that's working in collaboration with a government that we can't trust, in areas around the world, we can restructure that communications fabric in a way that it's encrypted.

With hacking getting more and more sophisticated, the hacking community has gone from the hobbyist in the basement to huge sophisticated companies that are essentially doing this, or groups of people or foreign agents inside and outside the United States.

Without encryption, you and I wouldn't be able to do our banking online. We wouldn't be able to buy things online, because your credit cards - they've probably been ripped off anyway, but they would be ripped off left and right every day if there wasn't encryption.

What happens with smaller businesses is that they give in to the misconception that their site is secure because the system administrator deployed standard security products - firewalls, intrusion detection systems, or stronger authentication devices such as time-based tokens or biometric smart cards. But those things can be exploited.

Second issue is the rapidly accelerating increase in the number of vulnerabilities that get discovered every day. And, equally importantly, is the shortening of time between the discovery of the vulnerability and the release of an exploit.

Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the Internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.

For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers.

Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.

I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing; you're screwed'.

There are two types of encryption: one that will prevent your sister from reading your diary and one that will prevent your government.

You don't need to be a spook to care about encryption. If you travel with your computer or keep it in a place where other people can put their hands on it, you're vulnerable.

I don't shop online. I'm always scared to put my credit card on the Internet!

Defending against military-strength malware is a real challenge for the computer security industry. Furthermore, the security industry is not global. It is highly focused in just a handful of countries. The rest of the countries rely on foreign security labs to provide their everyday digital security for them.

The most important impact of technology on communications security is that it draws better and better traffic into vulnerable channels.

Whether it's watching a $4,000 laptop fall off the conveyor belt at airport security, contending with a software conflict that corrupted your file management system, or begging your family to stop opening those virus-carrying 'greeting cards' attached to emails, all computer owners are highly leveraged and highly vulnerable technology investors.

A major attack on our cyber systems could shut down our critical infrastructure - financial systems, communications systems, electric grids, power plants, water treatment centers, transportation systems and refineries - that allows us to run our economy and protect the safety of Americans.

I talked to the general counsel of the DNC, and he assures me that every step along the way, when we were notified of these issues, that we changed systems, changed procedures, but these hackers are so sophisticated that they changed procedures.

I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again.

The problem of end-to-end encryption isn't just a terrorism issue.

Hillary Clinton and her media machine try to dismiss, but anybody who understands anything about how email works - and this is millennials in particular, who grew up on the Internet - know that you're an idiot to keep sensitive information on a server in your house.

The Internet opens up so many doors. It's a phenomenal tool for education but also a way for people to be scary and dangerous. We're living in a world where we can be hacked and exposed.

There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese.