Schneier: Government, big data pose bigger 'Net threat than criminals

L33tdawg: Don't miss Bruce's keynote at HITBSecConf2012 - Amsterdam on the 25th of May! The full speaker listing will be out on the 1st week of March.

As Bruce Schneier spent the past decade watching the growing rash of phishers, malware attacks, and identity theft, a new Internet threat has emerged that poses even greater risks, the security expert said.

Unlike the security risks posed by criminals, the threat from government regulation and data hoarders such as Apple and Google are more insidious because they threaten to alter the fabric of the Internet itself. They're also different from traditional Internet threats because the perpetrators are shielded in a cloak of legitimacy. As a result, many people don't recognize that their personal information or fortunes are more susceptible to these new forces than they ever were to the Russian Business Network or other Internet gangsters.

"Taken as a whole, there's a lot of things going on that affect our industry from outside our industry," Schneier, who is the author of five security books, said during a Wednesday keynote at the 24th General Meeting of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group. "These are things that might be imposed on us. More capability, more usability, less control."