Well, the first full technical day of the conference is almost over (except for the conference dinner)… and it was a great one.
The opening plenary session was a talk by Dick Kemmerer of UCSB, who is this year’s Distinguished Practitioner. He’ll tell you all about it if you buy him a beer. Actually, it was a review of his research work, the practical contributions therefrom, and the lessons he learned. It was very very good talk, and you can get the gist of it from the proceedings (which should be up on the ACSAC web page). Of course, you can still buy him that beer. For those who don’t know Dick, he’s a real character (and a great dancer). I was surprised how many of his projects I was either involved with (such as DG/UX) or knew of (such as his work at SDC or one Secure Ada and Secure Unix at UCLA). Dick is one of our conference regulars, as are many of his students, so do buy him that beer.
During the first real session I jumped between talks. I listed to an interesting paper on root of trust installations… and an even more interesting case study by Marshall Abrams on how applying IA controls would have helped during a pipeline valve break many years ago.
After lunch, I attended some really interesting case studies related to penetration testing. It is amazing how folks can get into systems, especially using avenues we don’t think of. There was also an interesting talk on how some contractors have been specifically targeted by adverseries, who were reacting in real time to the defensive measures taken. However, during that session the real fireworks were over in the NSPW panel… where for the last question, Steve Greenwald (a former NSPW chair) proposed to his long time sweetie (and our local arrangements chair), Laura. Of course, she said yes (they’ve been together over 20 years). To celebrate, he’s taking her to Disneyland in December 2008 (that’s a joke, son, as ACSAC 2008 is in Anaheim, and both will be there). Still, it made for quite a memorable moment.
Tonight is the conference dinner, so I’ll be signing off shortly.
