Editing Bruce Schneier (section)

=== Cryptography ===
To Schneier, peer review and expert analysis are important for the security of cryptographic systems.<ref name="crypto_harder">{{cite web |url=https://www.schneier.com/essay-037.html |title=Why Cryptography Is Harder Than It Looks |year=1997 |author=Schneier, Bruce |access-date=2011-04-08}}</ref> Mathematical cryptography is usually not the weakest link in a security chain; effective security requires that cryptography be combined with other things.<ref name="practical_crypto_preface">{{cite web |url=https://www.schneier.com/book-practical-preface.html |title=Practical Cryptography: Preface |author1=Ferguson, Niels |author2=Schneier, Bruce |access-date=2011-04-08}}</ref>

The term ''Schneier's law'' was coined by [[Cory Doctorow]] in a 2004 speech.<ref name=drm-talk>{{cite web |author=Cory Doctorow |date=2004-06-17 |title=Microsoft Research DRM talk |url=http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html |access-date=2006-12-31 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20061202192720/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = 2006-12-02|author-link=Cory Doctorow }}</ref> The law is phrased as:

{{quote|Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it.}}

He attributes this to Bruce Schneier, who wrote in 1998: "Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break. It's not even hard. What is hard is creating an algorithm that no one else can break, even after years of analysis."<ref>{{Cite web|title=Crypto-gram: October 15, 1998 - Schneier on Security|url=https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1015.html#cipherdesign|access-date=2022-01-26|website=www.schneier.com}}</ref>

Similar sentiments had been expressed by others before. In ''[[The Codebreakers]]'', [[David Kahn (writer)|David Kahn]] states: "Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break", and in "A Few Words On Secret Writing", in July 1841, [[Edgar Allan Poe]] had stated: "Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve."<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/schneiers_law.html| title = "'Schneier's law'"| date = April 15, 2011}}</ref>

Schneier also coined the term "kid sister cryptography", writing in the Preface to ''Applied Cryptography''<ref>{{cite book|last=Schneier|first=Bruce|date=1996|title=Applied Cryptography|url=https://www.schneier.com/books/applied-cryptography-2preface/|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-119-09672-6}}</ref> that:

{{quote|There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files. This book is about the latter.}}