Dear Readers,
There are only a few weeks left of early registration for the Security and Privacy Symposium aka "Oakland", which has once again migrated, this time returning to San Francisco. The program and papers are available at https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/sp/2018/4353/00/index.html. There is something in the program for almost every interest, be it ransomware, social media privacy, kernel bugs, interesting side channels, ... the list mirrors the threats and defenses of our digital lives.
Gene Spafford invites everyone to the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) for its annual security research symposium and its 20th anniversary bash April 3rd and 4th. See our news section for the registration link and other important information.
Instances of harrassment at the conferences sponsored by the TCSP seem rare, but in this #MeToo moment, conference-goers should be aware that IEEE has both a Code of Conduct and a Code of Ethics that make it clear that harrassment is not tolerated. There are IEEE ethics committees that deal with reports of bad conduct. The atmosphere at a conference is strongly influenced by the leadership. A diverse and proactive group of conference organizers and senior attendees makes all the difference. If the leadership at a conference seems thin on diversity, to the detriment of some attendees, speak up, volunteer, and make the conference better.
From our selection of news articles about security, we can see that more computers does not mean more security. This work is never done.
The Merry Minuet in C++
There's malware in Africa,
There's hacking in Spain,
There's ransomware in Florida,
And spam will flood Maine,
The whole world is festering with software at war,
CPlusPlusians hate CSharpians, CSharpians hate R,
Pythonistas hate the Perlites, the Perlites hate SQL,
And I say everyone can go to hell.
(with apologies to the great Sheldon Harnick)