RossFest,
Cambridge, UK
Website: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/events/rossfest
3/25/2025

Review by Sven Dietrich
3/27/2025

RossFest was one of the events that have honored Ross Anderson, a colleague in the field of computer security, the author of the well-known (and heavy) book "Security Engineering" published by Wiley, over the last year since his passing on March 28, 2024.

The team of former PhD students of Ross, Joseph Bonneau (New York University), Richard Clayton, (University of Cambridge), Markus Kuhn (University of Cambridge), Tyler Moore (University of Tulsa), Ilia Shumailov (Google DeepMind), Frank Stajano (University of Cambridge) put together the event itself, as well as solicited inputs (papers, memories), and finally published a Festschrift for this event. It is distributed as a Springer Verlag hardcopy which can be ordered, but can also be downloaded as PDF (DRM-free, as Ross would have liked it) from the event website (see above).

The daytime event at the Computer Laboratory was a collection of talks, panels, and even short memories given by relatives or colleagues in the field of computer security. The list is too long to be reproduced here. The speeches given summarized the many ways in which Ross Anderson influenced the field of computer security and help steer it forward, but also brought forth who he was as a person in the context of often funny anecdotes. In attendance in the auditorium were over 100 colleagues, students, staff, former collaborators, and other participants that felt they had been influenced by Ross Anderson in some way. The website has the program with a list of all the speakers. The videos of the presentations will be eventually released on that site for those speakers who agreed to have their memories recorded.

After the daytime attendees changed into their "fancier" clothes, the crowd gathered at "The Pickerel Pub" before wandering over to the also well-attended evening banquet at Trinity College, with another talk by Iain Anderson, the brother of Ross Anderson.

Ross, we will all miss you. Rest in peace.