I am only recently returned from the Security and Privacy Symposium, the 27th time this event has been held, always in the same place, always in May. This year's program had 33 papers (a mixture of long and short ones) and over 250 attendees. General Chair duties for the event took up most of my time for the past two weeks, and thus, Cipher is being published several days later than scheduled. Our next issue will have a full conference report.
This issue has an extensive report on the 10th Annual Financial Cryptography conference. Those of you who do not have travel budget for Antigua can enjoy the conference vicariously by reading the article.
Robert Bruen has contributed reviews of two books on the seemingly infinite subject of web security.
We have no lack of books and research papers about computers and security. When will our quest reach a milepost, a demarcation between the Internet of the Wild West and a Civilized Computing Society? When will we be able to look back and say, that was in the era of Feral Software, but today we live in Terra Tame Software? When will Information stay where it is supposed to, instead of wandering off into unintended network destinations? Is there a corner to be turned, or are we in an ever growing maze of creative and complex systems to be navigated? These are questions that stretch our ability to devise metaphors.
Have a good summer, look for Cipher in July.
Hilarie Orman