Quantcast
Gene Spafford

Biography

Gene Spafford, Ph.D., CISSP, is an internationally renowned scientist and educator who has been working in information security, policy, cybercrime, and software engineering for nearly two decades. He is a professor at Purdue University and is the director of CERIAS, the world's premier multidisciplinary academic center for information security and assurance. Professor Spafford and his students have pioneered a number of technologies and concepts well-known in security today, including the COPS and Tripwire tools, two-stage firewalls, and vulnerability databases. Spaf, as he is widely known, has achieved numerous professional honors recognizing his teaching, his research, and his professional service. These include being named a fellow of the AAAS, the ACM, and the IEEE; receiving the National Computer Systems Security Award; receiving the William Hugh Murray Medal of the NCISSE; election to the ISSA Hall of Fame; and receiving the Charles Murphy Award at Purdue. He was named a CISSP, honoris causa in 2000. In addition to over 100 technical reports and articles on his research, Spaf is also the coauthor of Web Security, Privacy, and Commerce, and was the consulting editor for Computer Crime: A Crimefighters Handbook (both from O'Reilly).

Articles

Blog

Gene's blog posts are hosted at:
http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/author/spaf/

Failures in the Supply Chain

November 16 2008

[This is dervied from a posting of mine to Dave Farber’s Interesting People list.] There is an article in the October Businessweek that describes the problem of counterfeit electronic components being purchased and used in critical Defense-related products. This is not a new threat. But first let’s reflect on the past. Historically, the… read more

Presidential Politics

October 19 2008

If you are in the United States, it has been nigh-on impossible to watch TV, read a newspaper, follow a blog, or (in some states) get your paper mail without something about the upcoming election being present. Some of this has been educational, but a huge amount of it has… read more

Barack Obama, National Security and Me, Take II

October 10 2008

Over the last month or so, many people who read my first post on Senator Obama’s “security summit” at Purdue have asked me about followup, I’ve been asked “Did you ever hear back from the Senator?”, “Has the McCain campaign contacted you?”, and “What do you think about the candidates?”… read more

Take 5 Minutes to Help Privacy Research!

September 25 2008

This is from our colleagues at NCSU, and is time-critical. Please take 5 minutes to fill out this (simple) survey. It will help an NSF-funded privacy project.. And “Thank you” from CERIAS, too!
read more

Centers of Academic …. Adequacy

September 19 2008

History Back in 1997, the year before CERIAS was formal read more

Who ya gonna call?

September 09 2008

This morning I received an email, sent to a list of people (I assume). The subject of the email was “Computer Hacker’s service needed” and the contents indicated that the sender was seeking someone to trace back to the sender of some enclosed email. The email in question? The pernicious… read more

Security Through Obscurity

September 04 2008

This was originally written for Dave Farber’s IP list. I take some of the blame for helping to spread “no security through obscurity,” first with some talks on COPS (developed with Dan Farmer) in 1990, and then in the first edition of “Practical Unix Security” (with Simson Garfinkel) in 1991.… read more

US Travel Tips for New Faculty…and for Not-so-New

August 21 2008

The academic year is beginning, and I have already been asked by new faculty about travel. I also recently heard about a problem from a more senior colleague. As I have traveled a lot for my work in the last 20 years, I have built up some experience as an… read more

Privacy Survey

August 18 2008

I am an advisor to ThePrivacyPlace.  They do great work on privacy issues, and this annual survey is valuable—but only with a lot of responses.  So, please respond and share the link with others. The following is their survey announcement. ThePrivacyPlace.Org Privacy Survey is Underway! Researchers at ThePrivacyPlace.Org are conducting… read more

Barack Obama, National Security, and Me

July 17 2008

[Update 7/17: Video of the Senator’s opening remarks and the panel session (2 parts) are now online at this site. I have also added a few links.] This story (somewhat long) is about Senator Barack Obama’s summit session at Purdue University today (Wednesday, July 16). on security challenges for the… read more
Gene Spafford