List Watch. IEEE Cipher Issue E73, E73.Jul-2006

Items from security-related news (E73.Jul-2006)

ACM SIGSAC AWARDS
Contributed by Pierangela Samarati
June 13, 2006

ACM SIGSAC is offering two annual awards: SIGSAC Outstanding Innovation Award and SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award. At most one award is given each year in each category.

The award criteria are as follows:

SIGSAC Outstanding Innovation Award: This award is given for outstanding and innovative technical contributions to the field of computer and communication security that have had lasting impact in furthering or understanding the theory or development of secure systems.
SIGSAC Outstanding Contribution Award: This award is given for significant contribution to the field of computer and communication security through fostering research and development activities, educating students, or providing professional services such as the running of professional societies and conferences.

The SIGSAC Awards Committee is now open to receiving nominations for the awards. The awards will be presented at ACM Computer and Communication Security Conference, Alexandria, VA, October 30 -- Nov. 3, 2006.

NOMINATION PROCESS: Each nomination should be co-sponsored by at least 3 people. Email co-sponsorship is accepted. Nominations should include a proposed citation (up to 25 words), a succinct (100-250 words) description of the innovation/contribution, and a detailed statement (1-2 page) to justify the nomination as well as other supporting materials. Nominations should be submitted via e-mail (with subject "SIGSAC Innovation/Contribution Award nomination") to the chair of the SIGSAC Awards Committee: Pierangela Samarati (samarati@dti.unimi.it).

DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS: Deadline for receiving nomination is August 5, 2006.

EXCLUSION: Members of the ACM SIGSAC Awards Committee are not eligible to be nominated.

The details related to the nomination process and administration of the awards are posted at http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigsac/awards.html

Microsoft: Vista Most Secure OS Ever
By Nate Mook and Tim Conneally, BetaNews June 15, 2006, 6:08 AM
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Vista_Most_Secure_OS_Ever/1150366131

"Services are now run with reduced privileges that contain profiles specifying allowed file system, registry and network activities."

"Internet Explorer 7 in Vista runs in a low Integrity Level known as 'Protected Mode' in order to prevent malicious Web sites from compromising an entire system."

Vista supports full disk on-the-fly encryption using 256-bit AES.

NIST Announces Hash Function Timeline
July 14, 2006

A tentative timeline of the development of new hash functions has been posted on the Hash Workshop web site:
http://www.nist.gov/hash-function

This topic will be discussed in the Second Cryptographic Hash Workshop. Comments should be sent to hash-function@nist.gov by August 4, 2006.

Details about the workshop and a preliminary program are available at the same web site listed above.

Sincerely,
The Hash Workshop Program Committee
NIST