Bruce Schneier
The Field’s Public Conscience
Applied Cryptography, Blowfish, and “security theatre”
Rating
95Impact score
Domains
CryptographySecurity economicsPublic policy
Scouting report
Wrote Applied Cryptography in 1994, the book that taught a generation of engineers how ciphers actually work, then designed Blowfish and co-designed Twofish. Spent the two decades after arguing the harder point: that security is a systems and incentives problem, not a maths problem. Coined “security theatre”, has written the Crypto-Gram newsletter since 1998, and helped report on the Snowden documents.
Curator’s note
More people entered this field because of one book than any other single cause.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Bruce Schneier by sfllaw, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.
Sources
- 01Bruce Schneier en.wikipedia.org
- 02Schneier on Security schneier.com