This issue marks the exodus of our book review editor, Bob Bruen, who has served Cipher for 10 years. Bob is an avid reader and has shared his impressions, good and bad, of books ranging over the huge spectrum of our field. After having done over 100 reviews, he is taking leave of us, and I'll certainly miss his contributions.
This leaves a marvelous opening in our newsletter staff. If you are in the habit of reading one security relevant book a month, consider becoming a book reviewer for Cipher. It's fun, it's easy, and you'll reach a couple of thousand people with each issue. Send email with a sample review to cipher-editor @ ieee-security.org if you are interested.
Volunteers like Bob are the foundation of this newsletter's existence. For example, we have a book review from Richard Austin, and two conference reviews this month by Sven Dietrich and Jeremy Epstein, reporting on DIVMA and USENIX Security respectively. Personal viewpoints on conference papers and panels our a great way to expand the influence of the conferences to those who don't travel to every event.
Yong Guan is our Calendar Editor, and his timely updates to the Calls-for-Papers have continued to make this a valuable resource for the security research community. I had a glitch in the process for getting the CFP updates onto the website, and if your CFP was late in being posted, I apologize. To really screw things up you need a computer, but a computer and a human acting at cross-purposes can beat all other possibilities hands down.
Speaking of CFPs, the one for the next Security and Privacy Symposium (aka Oakland) is now available. This newsletter and the Symposium are operated under the auspices of the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Security and Privacy, and as a member of that committee I commend the conference to you as an excellent venue for the best research in the field.
Watch out for exponent 3 in public keys, and don't tell your innermost secrets to your search engine.Hilarie Orman