“We're risking the future of the net. People are already losing their trust. Once you get burned once - somebody steals your credit card, or makes a purchase on your account - people tend to stay away from online commerce and from trusting online services.”
Mikko Hypponen“Foreigners like me have no privacy rights whatsoever. Yet we keep using U.S.-based services all the time, making us a legal target for gathering and storing our private information. Other countries do surveillance as well. But nobody has the global visibility that United States does.”
Mikko Hypponen“Governmental surveillance is not about the government collecting the information you're sharing publicly and willingly; it's about collecting the information you don't think you're sharing at all, such as the online searches you do on search engines... or private emails or text messages... or the location of your mobile phone at any time.”
Mikko Hypponen“It's been a bit sad to see that out of Linux distributions, it was Android - the most successful mobile Linux distribution - that has really introduced the malware problem to the Linux world.”
Mikko Hypponen“We're risking the future of the net. People are already losing their trust. Once you get burned once - somebody steals your credit card, or makes a purchase on your account - people tend to stay away from online commerce and from trusting online services.”
Mikko Hypponen“You can get the best locksmith in the world to design the best lock he can design, is it pick proof? No, it's not: it can be very hard to pick, but it is pickable. Because you can get, say, the next 10 best locksmiths, and give them unlimited money and time, they will figure out a way to pick it.”
Mikko Hypponen“I'm a hacker, but I'm the good kind of hackers. And I've never been a criminal.”
Mikko Hypponen“Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame are not normal, everyday malware, of course. All three of them were most likely developed by a Western intelligence agency as part of covert operations that weren't meant to be discovered. The fact that the malware evaded detection proves how well the attackers did their job.”
Mikko Hypponen“The United States has an unfair advantage, as most of the popular cloud services, search engines, computer and mobile operating systems or web browsers are made by U.S. companies. When the rest of the world uses the net, they are effectively using U.S.-based services, making them a legal target for U.S. intelligence.”
Mikko Hypponen“U.S. intelligence has the legal right to monitor foreign communications as they go through to U.S. service providers. However, even though something is legal doesn't make it right. I'm not American; I don't really care about what data is being collected about American citizens. I'm worried about us, the foreigners.”
Mikko Hypponen“It's high time for a fresh European alternative to enter the market, taking the existing Internet behemoths head on. What the world needs now is a cloud storage service that is not subject to uncontrolled access by intelligence agencies.”
Mikko Hypponen