Security quotes of the week

When we mere imperfect mortals deem to pit even our most righteous beliefs against the timorous gods of old, it is simultaneously an act of faith and the voluntary assumption of enormous risk, for the gods of obsolescence still possess mighty powers indeed.

In the end, the old gods of information scarcity and control will indeed die, and more open models will win the future.

This vulnerability was different in that it was an 0day (and has been for some time) inside all the major malware dropper kits. And yet, no massive screaming has really been reported. People aren't really [panicking]. Just the same advice - boring even to people in the security industry. You have to wonder - is the level of public infection so high that something this pervasive doesn't move the needle?

That is to say, The Dictator's Practical Internet Guide to Power Retention's main value is not for dictatorships at all; it is written for us, citizens of the free world, as a wake up call against the various stakeholder that wish to subdue the Internet away from us. Be it ACTA, TPP, SOPA, National Security Inquiry, Patriot Act or just your average copyright industry demand, our Internet is always in danger – and thus our freedom is as well.

The larger story here is that as more of our communications move to mobile devices and to the cloud, we will encounter surprising exceptions to our expectations for secure communications. Browsers like Nokia Xpress and Opera Mini are essentially moving our web browsing to the cloud—pushing the security functions that we traditionally thought existed in a safe zone within our device to far-away servers. At the same time, our devices can betray us by aiding and abetting this security offloading.