Eugene H. Spafford - CERIAS

Students: Spring 2026, unless noted otherwise, sessions will be virtual on Zoom.

ESP and Poly^2: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom

Apr 16, 2003

Abstract

We have seen about 15 years of development of intrusion detection systems, and almost 8 years of development of Internet servers. Despite that experience, we continue to have severe problems securing Internet enterprises. Break-ins, defacements of WWW pages, and self-propagating malicious code continue to multiply.

With all the research and money being directed to issues of security, one might think that a solution would be in reach. However, in this talk I will point out how the concept of "intrusion detection" has been blurred, and the assumptions behind current efforts to secure servers are likely to fail. At CERIAS, we are challenging some of this conventional wisdom when designing security services. By focusing on the design of securable systems instead of interoperation with existing platforms we have developed a highly-effective IDS (ESP), and are now building a high-performance testbed (Poly^2) to host it. This talk will describe our approach and the results to date.

About the Speaker

Dr. Eugene Spafford is a Distinguished Professor with an appointment in Computer Science at Purdue University, where he has served on the faculty since 1987. He is also a professor of Philosophy (courtesy), a professor of Communication (courtesy), a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (courtesy), a professor of Nuclear Engineering (courtesy), and a Professor of Political Science (courtesy). He serves on several advisory and editorial boards. Spafford's current research interests are primarily in information security, computer crime investigation, and information ethics. He is generally recognized as one of the senior leaders in the field of computing.

Spaf (as he is known to his friends, colleagues, and students) is the founder and Executive Director Emeritus of the Purdue CERIAS (Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security). He was the founder and director of the (superseded) COAST Laboratory.

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