Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World

by Bruce Schneier

Overview

"Sober, lucid and often wise." —Nature

The Internet is powerful, but it is not safe.
As "smart" devices proliferate the risks will get worse, unless we act now.

From driverless cars to smart thermostats, from autonomous stock-trading systems to drones equipped with their own behavioral algorithms, the Internet now has direct effects on the physical world. Forget data theft: cutting-edge digital attackers can now literally crash your car, pacemaker, and home security system, as well as everyone else’s.

In Click Here to Kill Everybody, best-selling author Bruce Schneier explores the risks and security implications of our new, hyper-connected era, and lays out common-sense policies that will allow us to enjoy the benefits of this omnipotent age without falling prey to the consequences of its insecurity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357448
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/08/2019
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	661,999
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Bruce Schneier is a renowned security technologist who has written over one dozen books, including the New York Times bestseller Data and Goliath and Click Here to Kill Everybody. He teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Everything Is Becoming A Computer 1

Part I The Trends 13

1 Computers Are Still Hard To Secure 19

2 Patching Is Failing As A Security Paradigm 34

3 Knowing Who's Who On The Internet Is Getting Harder 44

4 Everyone Favors Insecurity 56

5 Risks Are Becoming Catastrophic 78

Part II The Solutions 97

6 What A Secure Internet+ Looks Like 105

7 How We Can Secure The Internet+ 120

8 Government Is Who Enables Security 144

9 How Governments Can Prioritize Defense Over Offense 160

10 Plan B: What's Likely To Happen 180

11 Where Policy Can Go Wrong 192

12 Towards A Trusted, Resilient, And Peaceful Internet+ 207

Conclusion: Bring Technology And Policy Together 217

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 231

Index 309

About The Author 321

Editorial Reviews

09/03/2018
Schneier (Data and Goliath), a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, provides a clear perspective on the threat posed by the evolution of the internet into what is commonly referred to as the “internet of things.” As “everything is becoming a computer... on the Internet,” with even pedestrian items such as light bulbs or refrigerators collecting, using, and communicating data, the convenience and efficiency of such “smart” technology comes at the cost of increased vulnerability to the schemes of crafty hackers. Horror stories, such as a vehicle’s controls being taken over remotely, are not new, but Schneier’s vast experience enables him to tie together many strands and put them in context. For example, after discussing the inherent security issues with software (there are “undiscovered vulnerabilities in every piece”), Schneier goes on to observe that such flaws are only part of the problem; he convincingly demonstrates that a major, if not the main, reason, for an insecure internet is that its “most powerful architects—governments and corporations—have manipulated the network to make it serve their own interests.” Schneier concedes that his book has “a gaping hole” in not explaining how his nuanced recommendations for increasing security and resilience could become policy, but it is a useful introduction to the dimensions of the challenge. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"This thought-provoking book will mainly have you nodding in agreement and shaking your head in frustration. The future is not yet written, and so prediction, like attribution, is hard. Hopefully, enough people will read the book to change the path of the future. I plan to re-read it, and there can be no greater praise."

Virus Bulletin - Paul Baccas

"Schneier skillfully guides readers through serious attacks that have happened already—and moves on to those he believes are just over the horizon.… Schneier sets out detailed solutions that should be required reading for politicians across the world."

Financial Times

"“[Click Here to Kill Everybody] is sober, lucid and often wise in diagnosing how the security challenges posed by the expanding Internet came about, and in proposing what should (but probably won’t) be done about them."

Nature

"Schneier, more than the average policymaker or marketing blowhard, has a pretty good idea of what the actual benefits of these systems can be. He avoids the twin temptations of wholesale dismissal and breathless hype, and charts a course that manages the tricky business of being both nuanced and exciting."

Boing Boing - Cory Doctorow

"“[Click Here to Kill Everybody] is sober, lucid and often wise in diagnosing how the security challenges posed by the expanding Internet came about, and in proposing what should (but probably won’t) be done about them."

Nature Lib

2018-08-19

Big Brother is watching and scheming and up to no good—and, writes security technologist Schneier (Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, 2015), it looks like he's winning.

By way of an opening gambit, the author posits three scenarios in which hackers take over machines and computer systems, from printers to power plants, both to demonstrate their ability to do so and to show how the interdependence of the web can easily be put to work against us. In one of those scenarios, real-world to the core, Russian hackers came into a Ukrainian power plant through a malware backdoor, "then remotely took control of the center's computers and turned the power off." That's not just a threat to life, but it also erodes trust in social and economic systems, the basis for civil society. In another scenario, which gives the book its title, a "bio-printer" is hacked to "print a killer virus"—and does. Given all this, why don't the governments and corporations of the world band together to do a better job of cybersecurity? Because, Schneier answers, there are powerful forces that thrive on the "wicked problem" of cybersecurity and insecurity, for one thing; for another, "big companies with few competitors don't have much incentive to improve the security of their products, because users have no alternative." With due pessimism, the author argues that individuals must do their best to harden their own security even as governments battle against encryption, anonymity, and other security measures by claiming that the "Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse—terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime"—will be the ultimate beneficiaries of secure systems. On a larger level, Schneier proposes resilient systems that provide multiple defensive layers as well as reform of international laws and the establishment of protocols for enhanced protection against the real bad guys.

Useful for an internet user but particularly for those concerned with privacy, civil liberties, and related issues.

Kirkus Reviews