Seminar on December 12, 2022

Title

Network Security Topics

Speaker

Dr. Radia Perlman, Dell Technologies, USA

When and Where

December 12, 2022, 14:00-16:15
Room Leonardo, School of Engineering

Abstract

Part 1 - Tackling “the identity problem” - People mostly assume that “the identity problem” is well-understood, and that, given how long Internet authentication has been deployed, the world must have solved how to do that securely. This talk describes various facets of “the identity problem”; for instance, how does a website get a name, how does a website get a certificate, how does a browser know what to trust to sign certificates, how a human finds a website, how a user acquires a unique name, and how users prove they own their names. Surprisingly, there are unsolved issues with all of these aspects. As with most security problems, some people propose “blockchain” as being able to solve everything. This talk will describe what aspects of identity and authentication blockchain might address, and compare a “blockchain” approach with what is deployed today. (Hint: I will argue that blockchain will not be an improvement). If the talk spurs spirited debate, all the better.

Part 2: Demystifying quantum computers - There are many misconceptions about quantum computers. For instance, many people assume that a quantum computer is just like a classical computer, but a zillion times faster. This is incorrect. This talk will explain what is different about a quantum computer, and why (if a sufficiently large quantum computer can be built) they would break all of today’s deployed public key algorithms (RSA, elliptic curves, Diffie-Hellman). The talk will explain how Shor’s algorithm works (which is the algorithm that would run on a quantum computer and break our current public key algorithms). And it talks about what the world will need to do about this, which is to migrate to new public key algorithms. The talk will also give insight into what the new public key algorithms look like.

Short Bio

Dr. Radia Perlman is a Fellow at Dell Technologies. Her specialties include network routing protocols and network security. She developed the technology for making network routing self-stabilizing, largely self-managing, and scalable. She also invented the spanning tree algorithm, which transformed Ethernet from a technology that supported a few hundred nodes within a single building, to something that could support large networks. She also has made contributions in network security, including scalable data expiration, distributed algorithms despite malicious participants, DDOS prevention techniques, and user authentication. She is the author of the textbook “Interconnections” (about network layers 2 and 3) and coauthor of “Network Security”. The third edition of Network Security has very recently been published. She has been recognized with many industry honors including induction into the National Academy of Engineering, the Inventor Hall of Fame, The Internet Hall of Fame, Washington State Academy of Science, and lifetime achievement awards from Usenix and SIGCOMM. Most recently, she was awarded the IEEE Sumner award, and the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Innovation Award. She has a PhD in computer science from MIT.