NDSS Symposium 2002
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium
Catamaran Resort Hotel
San Diego, California
6-8 February 2002
General Chair's Message
Welcome to the Ninth Internet Society Symposium on Network and Distributed Systems Security. This symposium provides a forum for researchers, developers, and users of security technologies to discuss the latest advances and exchange ideas.
This year the topic of the symposium is particularly relevant as we have seen significant increase in the incidence of attacks, ranging from viruses and worms, denial of service attacks, and theft of credit card numbers from e-commerce sites. The events of September 11th made us all feel vulnerable to errorist attacks in general, and increasing our level of discomfort about the ulnerability of the computer systems on which we have become more dependent.
This years symposium was made possible by the hard work of many people. The steering group which I co-chair with Lynn St. Amour from the Internet Society, continues to chart a course for the conference that keeps its focus current, relevant, and practical. Once again, Tom Hutton coordinated local arrangements, and we hope excellent weather, for the meeting. Michele Estadt did a wonderful job handling the logistics for the meeting with the assistance of Terry Weigler, making my job as general chair a breeze. Eric Harder did a great job organizing a very relevant set of pre-conference tutorials. Publicity for the symposium was coordinated aptly by David Balenson and Martin Kupres lined up sponsors. Once again, Mahesh Tripunitara coordinated input from the authors and assembled this years proceedings and CD ROM.
Long after the meeting is complete, the success of the conference will be judged by the quality of the papers selected to appear. This selection process was taken on by the program committee under the leadership of the program co-chairs Paul Van Oorschot and Virgil Gligor. I thank Paul and Virgil and the entire program committee for their hard work and for the excellent program they have assembled. I would also like the thank the authors who submitted and will present papers, and the panelist who will speak during the symposium, for without them, there would not be a conference.
It is with sadness that I report on the passing of Jim Ellis. Those of you who have been regulars at this conference knew Jim as the General Chair of the 1995 and 1996 symposia. Those of you who aren't regulars probably know Jim from his role at the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). Jim's leadership helped make this symposium what is is today and I thank Jim for his guidance of the symposium in past years.
The Internet Society provided overall sponsorship for the symposium and I thank them for their support. Additionally, I would like to thank the National Security Agency (NSA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and WareOnEarth for their sponsorship of the symposium.
I am confident that the symposium will be productive, that you will make new contacts and leave the symposium with new ideas. I encourage you to develop those ideas when you go home and submit papers to next years symposium telling us how you built upon those ideas to improve the security of your systems and the new security technologies you have produced. Above all, enjoy the conference.
Clifford Neuman
University of Southern California
Information Sciences Institute
bcn@isi.edu
