Passwords 2016
I’m excited to see the call for papers for Passwords 2016.
There are a few exciting elements.
- First, passwords are in a category of problems that someone recently called “garbage problems.” They’re smelly, messy, and no one really wants to get their hands dirty on them.
- Second, they’re important. Despite their very well-known disadvantages, and failure to match any useful security model, and despite l Gates saying that we’d be done with them within the decade, they have advantages, and have been hard to displace.
- Third, they suffer from a common belief that everything to be said has been said.
- Fourth, the conference has a variety of submission types, including academic papers and hacker talks. This is important because there are many security research communities, doing related work, and not talking. Maybe the folks at passwords can add an anonymous track, for spooks and criminals willing to speak on their previously undocumented practices via skype or SnowBot? (Ideally, via the SnowBot, as PoC.)
Studying the real problems which plague us is a discipline that medicine and public health have developed. Their professions have space for everyone to talk about the real problems that they face, and there’s a clear focus on “have we really addressed this plague?”
While it’s fun, and valuable, to go down the memory corruption, crypto math, and other popular topics at security conferences, it’s nicer to see people trying to focus on a real cyber problem that hits every time we look at a system design.
Image: Mary E. Chollet, via Karen Kapsanis.