TECHNICAL SESSIONS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6 [Thursday, August 7] [Friday, August 8]
9:00 am - 10:30 am
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Opening Remarks, Awards, and Keynote
Keynote Address: Reflections on a Decade of Pseudonymity
Black Unicorn (a.k.a. A.S.L. von Bernhardi)
What is identity? What is reputation? What is trust? Are these concepts
as self-explanatory as they generally appear? This talk will examine the
shortcomings of several identity and reputation systems and explore
their importance from the perspective of the
practitioner designing critical systems and security architectures. We
will also direct an eye to evolving social, legal, and technical
expectations and how they impact our perceptions of these concepts.
Black Unicorn has served as a "Big 5" consultant, an entrepreneur, an
intelligence professional, a banker, a lobbyist, and a sometime
cypherpunk. A survey of his recent work includes modeling narcotics
smuggling and money laundering dynamics, a study of concepts of money
throughout history, and research into the behavioral economics of black
markets. He is currently at work developing political risk-hedging
methodologies for foreign exchange markets. 2003 marks the 10-year
anniversary of the pseudonym "Black Unicorn."
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10:30 am - 11:00 am Break
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11:00 am - 12:30 pm
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REFEREED PAPERS
ATTACKS
Session Chair: John McHugh, CERT
Awarded Best Paper!
Remote Timing Attacks Are Practical
David Brumley and Dan Boneh, Stanford University
802.11 Denial-of-Service Attacks: Real Vulnerabilities and Practical
Solutions
John Bellardo and Stefan Savage, University of California, San
Diego
Denial of Service via Algorithmic Complexity Attacks
Scott A. Crosby and Dan S. Wallach, Rice University
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INVITED
TALKS
DISTRIBUTING SECURITY: DEFENDING WEB SITES WITH 13,000 SERVERS
Speaker: Andy Ellis, Akamai
Early models of Web site defense focused on the challenges of
appropriately hardening a small cluster of machines and a simple network
infrastructure against attack. With 13,000 distributed servers, a
different set of challenges need to be overcome, from robust system
management and monitoring to providing protection to backend servers.
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ASK THE EXPERTS
IDS AND LOGGING
Tina Bird,
Stanford University
Tina Bird, as a Computer Security Officer for Stanford University, works on the design and implementation of security infrastructure; providing security alerts for the 40,000-host network; healthcare information security; and extending Stanford's logging infrastructure. Tina moderates the Log Analysis and VPN mailing lists; with Marcus Ranum, she runs www.loganalysis.org. Tina has a B.S. in physics from the University of Notre Dame and a master's degree and Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Minnesota.
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12:30 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch (on your own)
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2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
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REFEREED PAPERS
COPING WITH THE REAL WORLD
Session Chair: Crispin Cowan, Immunix Inc.
Plug-and-Play PKI: A PKI Your Mother Can Use
Peter Gutmann, Auckland University
Analyzing Integrity Protection in the SELinux Example Policy
Trent Jaeger, Reiner Sailer, and Xiaolan Zhang, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Security Holes . . . Who Cares?
Eric Rescorla, RTFM, Inc.
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INVITED
TALKS
PROTECTING THE INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
Speaker: John Ioannidis, AT&T Labs--Research
All Internet services depend on two infrastructure components: the
Domain Name System and the routing system. Neither has evolved with
much
security in mind. Both have depended instead on the friendly
cooperation
of the people who "run the network." These two essential components are
increasingly the target of attacks. Even worse, they are frequently
subject to misconfigurations (routing more so than DNS), and also
heavily affected by distributed denial of service attacks. This talk
gives an overview of the DNS and Internet routing, discusses their
security vulnerabilities, and explores where we are and where we should
be going to improve the situation.
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ASK THE EXPERTS
CRYPTOGRAPHY
Matt Blaze, AT&T LabsResearch
Matt Blaze's research focuses on the architecture and design of secure systems based on cryptographic techniques, analysis of secure systems against practical attack models, and on finding new cryptographic primitives and techniques. This work has led directly to several new cryptographic concepts, including "Remotely-Keyed Encryption", "Atomic Proxy Cryptography", and "Master-Key Encryption." He co-invented the notion of Trust Management and his work has led to two trust management languages, KeyNote and PolicyMaker.
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3:30 pm - 4:00 pm Break
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4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
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REFEREED PAPERS
PANEL: ELECTRONIC VOTING
Moderator: Dan Wallach, Rice University
Panelists: David Elliot, Washington State, Office of the Secretary of State; David Dill, Stanford University; Douglas Jones, University of Iowa; Sanford Morganstein, Populex; Jim Adler, VoteHere; Brian O'Connor, Sequoia; Avi Rubin, Johns Hopkins University & Technical Director of the Hopkins Information Security Institute
The U.S. national elections in 2000 demonstrated numerous problems
with punch-card voting systems. Many states are replacing such systems
with new, computerized ones. Most of these record and tally the
votes
completely in software, which raises concerns if the software is
either
simply buggy or has been subjected to malicious tampering. Hundreds of
computer scientists signed a petition demanding that these machines have
a "voter-verifiable audit trail." Academic experts, government
election
specialists, and voting system manufacturers will discuss security
requirements and mechanisms for managing our elections.
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INVITED
TALKS
INTERNET SECURITY: AN OPTIMIST GROPES FOR HOPE
Speaker: Bill Cheswick, Lumeta
By all accounts the Internet has grown more dangerous since its
inception. Most of the expected attacks have appeared and become
commonplace. Increasingly sophisticated malware has learned to hide in
the deep bushes of verdant, wild software. Users can't keep up with
these dangers, and it is hard enough for the professionals. Yet there
are indications that things can get better. Many important Web sites get
security right enough to support large business models. Those who run
our most secure networks report that they repeatedly pass the pop
quizzes of the attack du jour. We can use crypto when we want to, and
many do. We can do better, and many of us are starting to.
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ASK THE EXPERTS
FIREWALLS AND INTERNET SECURITY
Steve Bellovin, AT&T LabsResearch, IETF Security Area
Director
Steve Bellovin is an AT&T Fellow in the Network Services Research Lab at AT&T Labs Research in Florham Park, New Jersey. He is the co-author of Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker and holds several patents on cryptographic and network protocols. He served on a National Research Council study committee on information systems trustworthiness, is a member of the Internet Architecture Board, and is currently focusing on
how to design systems that are inherently more secure. He also
works on public policy questions relating to cryptography, Internet
security, and the Internet in general.
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2003 [Wednesday, August 6]
[Friday, August 8]
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9:00 am - 10:30 am
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REFEREED PAPERS
HARDENING I
Session Chair: David Wagner, University of California,
Berkeley
PointGuard: Protecting Pointers from Buffer Overflow
Vulnerabilities
Crispin Cowan, Steve Beattie, John Johansen, and Perry Wagle, Immunix, Inc.
Address Obfuscation: An Efficient Approach to Combat a Broad Range of Memory Error Exploits
Sandeep Bhatkar, Daniel C. DuVarney, and R. Sekar, Stony Brook
University
High Coverage Detection of Input-Related Security Faults
Eric Larson and Todd Austin, University of Michigan
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INVITED
TALKS
WHEN POLICIES COLLIDE: WILL THE COPYRIGHT WARS ROLL BACK THE COMPUTER
REVOLUTION?
Speaker: Mike Godwin, Public Knowledge
The last two years have seen an unprecedented effort by content
companies--notably the movie studios--to press for legislative or
regulatory requirements that could have closed down the open-platform,
general-
purpose computer as such. Where are these efforts going? What do they
signify? What should we do about it?
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ASK THE EXPERTS
PKI MODELS, DISTRIBUTED NESTED GROUPS,
AND REVOCATION
Radia Perlman, Sun Microsystems
Radia Perlman is a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. She is known for her contributions to bridging (spanning tree algorithm) and routing (link state routing), as well as security (sabotage- proof networks). She is the author of Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols, and co-author of Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World, two of the top 10 networking reference books, according to Network Magazine. She is one of the 25 people whose work has most influenced the networking industry, according to Data Communications Magazine. She holds about 50 issued patents, an S.B. and S.M in mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT and an honorary doctorate from KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
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10:30 am - 11:00 am Break
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11:00 am - 12:30 pm
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REFEREED PAPERS
DETECTION
Session Chair: Dawn Song, Carnegie Mellon University
Storage-based Intrusion Detection: Watching Storage Activity for
Suspicious Behavior
Adam G. Pennington, John D. Strunk, John Linwood Griffin, Craig A.N. Soules, Garth R. Goodson,
and Gregory R. Ganger, Carnegie Mellon University
Detecting Malicious Java Code Using Virtual Machine Auditing
Sunil Soman, Chandra Krintz, and Giovanni Vigna, University of
California, Santa Barbara
Static Analysis of Executables to Detect Malicious Patterns
Mihai Christodorescu and Somesh Jha, University of Wisconsin,
Madison
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INVITED
TALKS
PHYSICAL SECURITY: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Speaker: Mark Seiden, MSB Associates
Physical security is an oft-overlooked but critical prerequisite for
good information security. A bad guy with a console root login can
obviously adversely affect behavior in basic or profound ways, but you
may not
know how trust can be completely breached by brief and seemingly limited
physical exposure using spiffy/inexpensive tools available on Ebay.
Another dirty little secret: When critically examined, physical security
policies/mechanisms perhaps have *always* oozed snake oil, including
back doors relying on "security through obscurity" and ignoring
environmental context--the need to function in a system.
Outsourcing/colocation often presents only the perception (seldom the
actuality) of security. A badging
system implementation turns out to be >200K LOC, rather than simply
"wave badge at the reader and maybe let 'em in," and is as buggy as any
large program.
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ASK THE EXPERTS
APPLICATION-LEVEL SECURITY PROTOCOLS: PGP, S/MIME, SSL, AND SSH
Peter Gutmann, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Peter Gutmann arrived on earth some eons ago when his physical essence filtered down from the stars, and he took human(?) form. Once computers were invented he became involved in security research in the hope that enough insider knowledge would, at the right time, allow him to bypass electronic security measures on the first translight spacecraft and allow him to return to the stars. This is probably still some time away. Until then he spends his time as a researcher at the University of Auckland, poking holes in security systems and mechanisms (purely for practice), and throwing rocks at PKIs. |
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch (on your own)
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2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
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REFEREED PAPERS
APPLIED CRYPTO
Session Chair: Patrick McDaniel, AT&T Labs--Research
SSL Splitting: Securely Serving Data from Untrusted Caches
Chris Lesniewski-Laas and M. Frans Kaashoek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A New Two-Server Approach for Authentication with Short Secrets
John Brainard, Ari Juels, Burt Kaliski, and Michael Szydlo, RSA
Laboratories
Domain-Based Administration of Identity-Based Cryptosystems for
Secure Email and IPSEC
D. K. Smetters and Glenn Durfee, Palo Alto Research Center
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INVITED
TALKS
THE INTERNET AS THE ULTIMATE SURVEILLANCE NETWORK
Speaker: Richard M. Smith
This session will look at the economic, technological, and political
forces which are changing the Internet into a worldwide surveillance
network. As more intelligent devices are connected to the Internet, the
Internet will become less of an information publisher and more of an
information collector. Technologies which are pushing along this
transformation include ubiquitous wireless IP networking, RFID tags,
low-cost digital sensors, and XML. This session will look at trends in
technology to help understand how this surveillance network will be
used, who will control it, how it will be secured, and its potential
impact on personal privacy.
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ASK THE EXPERTS
NETWORK MAPPING
Bill Cheswick, Lumeta
Bill Cheswick has worked on (and against) operating system security for over 30 years. While at Bell Laboratories as a member of the Technical Staff, he did early work on firewall design and implementation, including the first circuit-level gateway, for which he coined the term "proxy". Ches also worked on PC viruses, mailers, Internet munitions, and the Plan 9 operating system. He co-authored the first full book on firewalls, and has since toured the world giving media interviews and entertaining post-lunch security talks. Cliff Stoll, who is given to overstatement, has called Ches "one of the seven avatars of the Internet."
In 1998, Ches started the Internet Mapping Project with Hal Burch. This work became the core technology of a Bell Labs spin-off, Lumeta Corporation, which explores the extent of corporate and government intranets and checks for host leaks that violate perimeter policies.
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3:30 pm - 4:00 pm Break
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4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
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PANEL: REVISITING TRUSTED COMPUTING
Moderator: David Farber, University of Pennsylvania
Panelists: Lucky Green; Leendert van Doorn, IBM; Bill
Arbaugh, University of Maryland; Peter Biddle, Microsoft
Suddenly, cybersecurity is on the lips of senior government officials,
high-level corporate executives, and even casual computer users who
hadn't a clue what it was six months ago. Secure systems proposals, most
notably the Trusted Computer Platform Alliance (TCPA), can generate
considerable controversy. The hazy debate forming about this area ends
up sounding like a choice between no secure computer systems and
potential damage to our established copyright mechanisms and freedom of
speech. Professor Farber will moderate an examination of this complex
set of issues and the question of how to find an acceptable path
forward.
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ASK THE EXPERTS
HONEYD, HONEYPOTS
Niels Provos University of Michigan
Niels Provos is an experimental computer scientist conducting
research in steganography and in computer and network security. He
is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, a member of the
Honeynet project and an active contributor to open source projects.
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2003 [Wednesday, August 6]
[Thursday, August 7]
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9:00 am - 10:30 am
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REFEREED PAPERS
HARDENING II
Session Chair: Steve Bellovin, AT&T Labs--Research
Preventing Privilege Escalation
Niels Provos, CITI, University of Michigan; Markus Friedl, GeNUA
mbH; Peter Honeyman, CITI, University of Michigan
Dynamic Detection and Prevention of Race Conditions in File
Accesses
Eugene Tsyrklevich and Bennet Yee,
University of California, San Diego
Improving Host Security with System Call Policies
Niels Provos, CITI, University of Michigan
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INVITED
TALKS
THE INTERNET IS TOO SECURE ALREADY
Speaker: Eric Rescorla, RTFM, Inc.
The cryptographers and COMSEC engineers have given us an incredible
number of fundamental security primitives. We now have good versions of
essentially all the tools we know how to build at all. These tools are
so good that attacks which are either impractical or entirely
theoretical are nevertheless considered major successes. At the same
time, the vast majority of traffic on the Internet is completely
unprotected. These two phenomena are not unrelated. The flip side of the
praise given for finding relatively small vulnerabilities is the massive
amount of effort that developers feel they have to expend on fixing (and
preventing) even quite small vulnerabilities. The inevitable result is
that designers spend much more time enhancing security protocols than
figuring out how to deploy them in real applications.
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10:30 am - 11:00 am Break
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11:00 am - 12:30 pm
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REFEREED PAPERS
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
Session Chair: Dan Boneh, Stanford University
Scrash: A System for Generating Secure Crash Information
Pete Broadwell, Matt Harren, and Naveen Sastry, University of
California, Berkeley
Implementing and Testing a Virus Throttle
Jamie Twycross and Matthew M. Williamson, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bristol
Awarded Best Student Paper! Establishing the Genuinity of Remote Computer Systems
Rick Kennell and Leah H. Jamieson, Purdue University
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INVITED
TALKS
THE CASE FOR ASSURANCE IN SECURITY PRODUCTS
Speaker: Brian Snow, National Security Agency
Security products need to work as intended, especially in the presence
of malice. This requires considerable effort during all phases of the
life cycle, from design, through evaluation and field use, to the
eventual retirement
of the product. The mechanisms that assure the customer of robust
performance differ from one part of the life cycle to the next. They
include technical enhancements, human processes, and legal constraints,
among others. The talk offers views from three perspectives: research,
security service and product provisioning, and education and training.
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12:30 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch (on your own)
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2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
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WORK-IN-PROGRESS REPORTS
Chair: Kevin Fu, MIT
Short, pithy, and fun, Work-in-Progress Reports introduce interesting
new or ongoing work, and the USENIX audience provides valuable
discussion and feedback. If you have work you would like to share or a
cool idea that's not quite ready for publication, send a one- or
two-paragraph summary to sec03wips@usenix.org. We are particularly
interested in presenting students' work. A schedule of presentations
will be posted at the conference, and the speakers will be notified in
advance. Work-in-Progress reports are five-minute presentations; the
time limit will be strictly enforced.
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