NDSS 2013 – General Chair's Message

It is my pleasure to welcome you all back to the beautiful Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa on Mission Bay in San Diego for the Internet Society’s Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS’13). This year’s meeting is a milestone for us and we thank you for helping us celebrate the Twentieth Anniversary of what started out as the “PSRG Workshop on Network and Distributed System Security.” That informal two-day workshop, held right here at the Catamaran on February 11-12, 1993, was such a unique and successful event that we are now in our 20th year. We still offer a unique and highly intellectual symposium. Many thanks to the original workshop chairman, Dan Nessett, then of Lawrence Livermore National Labs, along with the 1992 PSRG, for creating such a high quality and successful symposium, one that I hope continues another 20 years and more. I wish to especially recognize NDSS’ previous chairs: Dan Nessett (1993-94), James Ellis (1995-96), David Balenson (1997-98), Steve Welke (1999-01), Cliff Neuman (2002-04), Eric Harder (2005-07), and Doug Szajda (2008-11).

I would like to thank the Catamaran Resort for providing such an excellent venue. Even though we have switched venues several times over the last twenty years, I’m not sure we would be here today without the help of the fantastic staff of this facility. Their willingness to allow a no-name, informal group of security and network researchers to reserve their meeting and hotel rooms back in 1993 with virtually no collateral or history is what allowed this symposium to be born.

From our very first workshop and continuing today, NDSS has striven to maintain the superior quality of our technical program. Our research domain continues to emphasize practical applications of security based on solid theoretical foundations. The program stretches from canonical to current, and includes both the theoretical and the pressing need. This scope, along with a willingness to consider potentially controversial or unusual research, is the essential beauty of NDSS.

The program for this year packs a lot into three days and includes twelve sessions and forty-seven original research papers. They cover a variety of current topics such as the security and privacy of mobile devices, cloud computing, distributed systems and networks, web security and privacy, intrusion detection and attack analysis, anonymity, and more. Our three keynote speakers are: Dr. Richard Kemmerer, Computer Science Leadership Chair at University of California Santa Barbara; Stephen Smalley of the Trusted Systems Research Group at the US National Security Agency (NSA); and Joe Sullivan, Chief Security Officer of Facebook. The Program Committee has also included twelve short talks.

Although the symposium revolves around the technical presentations, there is far more to the experience. You are encouraged to take advantage of the hall track, the lunches, and the dinners to meet new colleagues. Participate in discussions, always an invaluable part of disseminating information. Remember also to take in our fantastic geographic location.

This symposium is possible only through the hard work of many people. The Steering Group, which I am pleased to co-chair with Lynn St. Amour from the Internet Society, expertly charts a course for the conference that keeps its focus current, relevant, and practical. Andrew M. White skillfully assembled the Proceedings as Publications Chair. Kevin Craemer has done a wonderful job of finding sponsors and helping plan and publicize the conference and Terry Weigler, as always has done a fantastic job dealing with each and every one of you for Registration. This meeting is as enjoyable and as successful as it is because of the efforts of these people — it is no exaggeration to say that NDSS simply would not happen without each of their contributions.

The quality of this conference directly depends upon the quality of the papers and short talks accepted. The Program Committee, under the direction of Program Chair Peng Ning of North Carolina State University, has done a fantastic job and selected an extraordinary set of papers. I thank Peng and the entire Program Committee for their expertise, hard work, and dedication. I also thank the authors who submitted papers and the speakers who are present; YOU are the core of this symposium.

I want to thank our sponsors, as it would be impossible to hold such an event without them. Our sponsors are the Internet Society for overall sponsorship, Internet2 for Gold Sponsorship; Afilias, FishNet Security, Qualcomm, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center @ UCSD (SDSC) for Silver sponsorship; Research at Google and Microsoft Research for Bronze sponsorships, and IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine as our media sponsor. The conference is organized by the Internet Society, in cooperation with USENIX.

I would also like to thank my organization, the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego, for supporting my involvement with this symposium for the last twenty years. Finally, I want all of you to know that I consider it a great honor to chair this conference, one where the attendees and speakers are some of the finest minds in computer security.

Thomas Hutton
NDSS 2013 General Chair
San Diego Supercomputer Center
University of California, San Diego
[email protected]