Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer and operate computer systems
— Kevin Mitnick
Vibrant Computer Security quotations
The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards.
This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.
Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.
Passwords are like underwear: you don’t let people see it, you should change it very often, and you shouldn’t share it with strangers.
If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked.
What's more, you deserve to be hacked.
Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers - organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative - if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back.
We've created life in our own image.
The fundamental driver in computer security, in all of the computer industry, is economics. That requires a lot of re-education for us security geeks.
The problem of viruses is temporary and will be solved in two years.
The security of computers and the Internet is a horrible and dangerous mess.
Every week we hear about breaches of databases of Social Security numbers and financial information and health records, and about critical infrastructure being insecure.
This Windows 95 hairball has become so big, so unmanageable, so hard to use, so hard to configure, so hard to keep up and running, so hard to keep secure. Windows 95 is a great gift to give your kid this Christmas because it will keep your kid fascinated for months trying to get it up and running and trying to figure out how to use it.
I think computer viruses should count as life.
Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer.
If security were all that mattered, computers would never be turned on, let alone hooked into a network with literally millions of potential intruders.
We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry.
The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software - that's something we brought to computing. And so it's a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don't get in the way of that dream.
People have to be free to investigate computer security.
People have to be free to look for the vulnerabilities and create proof of concept code to show that they are true vulnerabilities in order for us to secure our systems.
Look at airport security now. What started out as definite racial profiling is now where the computer picks a name. That's why you get a seven-month-old getting a pat down. [Imitates a security officer.] "Check the diapers. They're full."
A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness—not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”
Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.
In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to.
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.
To model correctly one tranche of one CDO took about three hours on one of the fastest computers in the United States. There is no chance that pretty much anybody understood what they were doing with these securities. Creating things that you don't understand is really not a good idea no matter who owns it.
It used to be expensive to make things public and cheap to make them private.
Now it's expensive to make things private and cheap to make them public.
Microsoft made a big deal about Windows NT getting a C2 security rating.
They were much less forthcoming with the fact that this rating only applied if the computer was not attached to a network and had no network card, and had its floppy drive epoxied shut, and was running on a Compaq 386. Solaris's C2 rating was just as silly.
People don't want to talk about death, just like they don't want to talk about computer security. Maybe I should have named my workstation Fear. People are so motivated by fear.
If you cannot make moving pictures about yourself, your country and your culture, it's as if you do not exist anymore in this world of images we live in. Because now when we all switch on our smartphones or our iPads or our computers, it's all image and sound. All people and cultures must work to secure their place in the digital space. Cinema is also political in this way.
My background, I really am a computer hacker.
I've studied computer science, I work in computer security. I'm not an actively a hacker, I'm an executive but I understand the mindset of changing a system to get the outcome that you want. It turns out to make the coffee, the problem is actually how the beans get turn into green coffee. That's where most of the problems happen.
I built my own studio. I don't have the professional language to describe it because I'm not a videographer - but I'm a technician. So I get the camera, I get all the things that translate the camera to the computer, I set up a live session, I do the security on it, I set up a background so I can key it out, like newscasters do, and replace it with whatever I want - and I can be anywhere I need to be.
I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable.But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society.
I use a computer, but before I begin each new book I keep a notebook.
I write down everything that comes to mind during that period before I actually begin. It might take months or weeks. That notebook is my security blanket so that I never have to face a blank screen (or blank page). But I print out often and my best ideas usually come with a pencil in my hand.
I don't think it's a lack of will. I think it's an issue of what people view as constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment, number one, and what customers and business partners expect around the world from secure computing systems. And it's a difference of view.
We live in a world where we're all on computers and tablets and phones, all the time, so something as odd as computer hacking or a virus is really scary because it gets to the heart of our security.
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise - security, quality and worms.