Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak likensย cyber crime to the atom bomb threat
In an interview on Australian TV news show, Lateline, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said that cybersecurity is the greatest threat known to man since the atom bomb, one which is getting โworse and worse year by year.โ
The Woz, told Lateline that cybercrime was the greatest threat the world faced and he likened it to the cold war nuclear hysteria of his childhood.
“We used to fear the atomic bomb when I was young, and you used to come home from school and sirens would go off for a test on every corner,” he said.
Saying that the cyber threat seems to unstoppable, Wozniak added:
“Now we fear all the cyber attacks and hacking. What’s the next one we’re going to hear about?ย “Is one going to come close to me? Is it going to hit me? Could they really take out our electrical system, take out our internet, how far can it go? And it’s getting worse and worse year by year, not better and better.”
Woz hits out at FBI
Woz also hit out at the FBI’s attempts to force the tech giant to unlock an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist. . Woz sid it was wrong for the US government to try to order Apple to unlock the phone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters
“What if the FBI was able to go to any company, any time they felt like it and said you have to build a product our way? I don’t think that’s right,” he said.
“What if the FBI can’t get into a phone? They’ve still got all the records in this recent case, they’ve still got all the records from the phone company โ of every communication that was made, of every SMS message that was sent.”
Woz left his role as vice-president of research and development at Apple in the 1980s and sold most of his shares, but he is still an employee of the company and receives an annual salary. At present, he is theย Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney’s Engineering and IT faculty.
Wozniak had said that he would love to retire in Australia, where his son and his family live.
“Right now I have a type of life that is constantly travelling … if I didn’t have that life I would have a residence here (Sydney),” he said.
“My son though has moved here, he’s an Australian and my first granddaughter is here in Sydney, three months old and she’s an Australian and American.”