Dear Readers,
The IEEE Computer Society recently held elections, and we are pleased to congratulate Terry Benzel, long-time leader in the sphere of cybersecurity, and especially of all things related to the Security and Privacy Symposium, on her election to the position of Vice President. The results of the election for officers and the Board of Governors is here: full results.
Somberly we note that two important figures in the history of computer security died recently: George Davida, who was a founder of the Security and Privacy Symposium, and Marv Schaefer, a researcher who was a pioneer in secure operating system design and the precise definition of security requirements. Information about them can be found at ACSA's In Memoriam page (Davida will be added soon; see also his University of Wisconsin obituary). It may be hard for people to remember the early days of our research field when conferences were small and papers were few. There were not many computers, and threats were minimal. That was the era when the foundational work was done by a handful of far-sighted people.
News for this issue of the newsletter includes a recent report on the investigation into a widespread cyberattack on telecommunications infrastructure. The actors behind the attack could have acquired information of some kind or another for almost everyone in the US. In terms of database technology, an index for 400 million objects is not much of a challenge. There have been so many disclosures of personal information over the last several years that it would be surprising if such a database did not exist. Moreover, several different entities are probably maintaining their own versions of this. Should the "Whole Earth Phone Book" be a public service?
Old Time EMail BluesHilarie Orman
You ain't nothin' but a filter,
Just Bayesian design.
You ain't never caught a phisher,
Well, you ain't no friend of mine.
When they said you was accurate,
Well, that was just a lie
You found false positives,
And you ain't no friend of mine.
(With apologies to The King),