Bruce Schneier

In The Codebreakers, David Kahn states: "Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break", and in "A Few Words On Secret Writing", in July 1841, Edgar Allan Poe had stated: "Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve."

Schneier also coined the term "Kid Sister cryptography", writing in the Preface to Applied Cryptography that:

"There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your Kid Sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files."

Schneier is critical of digital rights management (DRM) and has said that it allows a vendor to increase lock-in.

Proper implementation of control-based security for the user via trusted computing is very difficult, and security is not the same thing as control.

Schneier insists that "owning your data is a different way of thinking about data."

Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer.

After receiving a physics bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1984, he went to American University in Washington, D.C., and got his master's degree in computer science in 1988.

In 1991, Schneier was laid off from his job and started writing for computer magazines.

Later he decided to write a book on applied cryptography "since no such book existed".

He took his articles, wrote a proposal to John Wiley and they bought the proposal.

In 1994, Schneier published Applied Cryptography, which details the design, use, and implementation of cryptographic algorithms.

"This book allowed me to write more, to start consulting, to start my companies, and really launched me as an expert in this field, and it really was because no one else has written this book. I wanted to read it so I had to write it. And it happened in a really lucky time when everything started to explode on the Internet."

He attributes this to Bruce Schneier, who wrote in 1998: "Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break. It's not even hard. What is hard is creating an algorithm that no one else can break, even after years of analysis."

Similar sentiments had been expressed by others before.

In 2000, Schneier published Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World; in 2003, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World; in 2012, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive; and in 2015, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.

Schneier writes a freely available monthly Internet newsletter on computer and other security issues, Crypto-Gram, as well as a security weblog, Schneier on Security.

The blog focuses on the latest threats, and his own thoughts.

The weblog started out as a way to publish essays before they appeared in Crypto-Gram, making it possible for others to comment on them while the stories were still current, but over time the newsletter became a monthly email version of the blog, re-edited and re-organized.

Schneier is frequently quoted in the press on computer and other security issues, pointing out flaws in security and cryptographic implementations ranging from biometrics to airline security after the September 11 attacks.

Schneier warns about misplaced trust in blockchain and the lack of use cases, calling blockchain a solution in search of a problem.

He goes on to say that cryptocurrencies are useless and are only used by speculators looking for quick riches.

To Schneier, peer review and expert analysis are important for the security of cryptographic systems.

Mathematical cryptography is usually not the weakest link in a security chain; effective security requires that cryptography be combined with other things.

The term Schneier's law was coined by Cory Doctorow in a 2004 speech.

The law is phrased as:

"Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it."

In 2010 he published Cryptography Engineering, which is focused more on how to use cryptography in real systems and less on its internal design.

He has also written books on security for a broader audience.

He was awarded an honorary Ph.D from the University of Westminster in London, England, in November 2011.

The award was made by the Department of Electronics and Computer Science in recognition of Schneier's 'hard work and contribution to industry and public life'.

Schneier was a founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security (now BT Managed Security Solutions).

Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society as of November, 2013.

He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and The Tor Project; and an advisory board member of Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org.

He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography and is a squid enthusiast.

In 2015, Schneier received the EPIC Lifetime Achievement Award from Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Bruce Schneier is the son of Martin Schneier, a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge.

He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, attending P.S. 139 and Hunter College High School.

He is Jewish.

He worked for IBM once they acquired Resilient Systems where Schneier was CTO until he left at the end of June 2019.