Dear Readers,
We sadly note the recent death of Peter G. Neumann. His
contributions to security and privacy are inadequately described by
the word "extraordinary". This CACM article from May 18 is one of several
published remembrances of him:
"In Memoriam: Peter G. Neumann (1932-2026)
For seven decades, Neumann chronicled how computer systems fail and patiently advocated for the principles that make them fail less often.
By Eugene H. Spafford and Simson L. Garfinkel."
Also, our friends at ACSA
maintain an in
memoriam page where further tributes may appear.
PGN died the day before the start of the Security and Privacy Symosium in San Francisco. He almost always attended, and last year he was there to receive an award for the work of SRI's CHERI team. He was proud of achievements of that group in furthering secure computing in a untrustworthy world. He never tired of pointing out that "you can't trust the software, you can't trust the hardware, and you can't trust the firmware". He was a guiding star.
The S&P Symposium took note of his passing on the first day of the conference. This multi-track conference is attended by more than 700 people these days --- a far cry from its beginnings as a workshop in its early days when PGN was already a noted researcher.
PGN was a great fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, and he enjoyed this satirical parody from Cipher several years ago:
As someday it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list -- I've got a little list.
Of security offenders whose mistakes must be unwound,
And who never would be missed - who never would be missed.
There's the coder with the strings whose lengths are never checked,
They cause stack overflows that turn memory to dreck,
All sysadmins who leave the password files online,
All RAM designers setting bytes that never will align,
And open source reusers blithely setting sudo bits,
And all those snarky kids making zero day rootkits,
They'd none of them be missed -- they'd none of them be missed.
(Thank you to the immortal G&S, and farewell PGN),