In 1990, hypertext was a utopian conjecture. Since then, a hypertext system called the World Wide Web not only become the predominant medium of human communication, but also one of the primary methods for distributing software. Obviously, this transition has had implications for subjects of geopolitical interest including software security, political discourse, and the ability of states to surveil their citizens' communications and reading habits.

Because it was hard enough to build a global hypertext system in the first place, security was generally an afterthought in the design of the World Wide Web. One necessary component of a secure website is HTTPS encryption, but it is still only used correctly by a tiny fraction of websites. Any website that allows http:// as well as https:// is inherently vulnerable to network surveillance, account hijacking, and other forms of insecurity. To make matters worse, HTTPS itself has been plagued by numerous security problems and design flaws.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been engaged in a series of projects to encrypt the entire Web, retiring the insecure HTTP protocol, and ensuring that "HTTPS" actually delivers what it promises. These projects include HTTPS Everywhere, the SSL Observatory, Sovereign Keys, and efforts to persuade major sites to deploy HTTPS. In this talk Peter will give an overview of these projects, the significant progress they have made to date, and the work that remains to be done.

About the speaker: Peter Eckersley is Technology Projects Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He keeps his eyes peeled for technologies that, by accident or design, pose a risk to computer users' freedoms—and then looks for ways to fix them. He explains gadgets to lawyers, and lawyers to gadgets. Peter's work at EFF has included privacy and security projects such as Panopticlick, HTTPS Everywhere, SSDI, and the SSL Observatory; helping to launch a movement for open wireless networks; fighting to keep modern computing platforms open; and running the first controlled tests to confirm that Comcast was using forged reset packets to interfere with P2P protocols.

Peter holds a PhD in computer science and law from the University of Melbourne; his research focused on the practicality and desirability of using alternative compensation systems to legalize P2P file sharing and similar distribution tools while still paying authors and artists for their work.

Peter will discuss work at SRI and the University of Cambridge under two projects currently funded by DARPA, relating to clean-slate architectures for hardware, software, networking, and clouds, aimed at higher-assurance security, resilience, evolvability, and other critical requirements.

Two papers provide some early views of the ongoing work:

http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/law10.pdf 
http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/2012resolve-cheri.pdf

Peter G. Neumann (Neumann@CSL.sri.com) has doctorates from Harvard and Darmstadt. After 10 years at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the 1960s, during which he was heavily involved in the Multics development jointly with MIT and Honeywell, he has been in SRI's Computer Science Lab since September 1971. He is concerned with computer systems and networks, trustworthiness/dependability, high assurance, security, reliability, survivability, safety, and many risks-related issues such as election-system integrity, crypto applications and policies, health care, social implications, and human needs -- especially those including privacy. He is currently PI on two DARPA projects: clean-slate trustworthy hosts for the CRASH program with new hardware and new software, and clean-slate networking for the Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds program. He moderates the ACM Risks Forum, has been responsible for CACM's Inside Risks columns monthly from 1990 to 2007, tri-annually since then, chairs the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, and chairs the National Committee for Voting Integrity (http://www.votingintegrity.org). He created ACM SIGSOFT's Software Engineering Notes in 1976, was its editor for 19 years, and still contributes the RISKS section. He is on the editorial board of IEEE Security and Privacy. He has participated in four studies for the National Academies of Science: Multilevel Data Management Security (1982), Computers at Risk (1991), Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society (1996), and Improving Cybersecurity for the 21st Century: Rationalizing the Agenda (2007). His 1995 book, Computer-Related Risks, is still timely. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS, and is also an SRI Fellow. He received the National Computer System Security Award in 2002 and the ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award in 2005. He is a member of the U.S. Government Accountability Office Executive Council on Information Management and Technology, and the California Office of Privacy Protection advisory council. In 2012, he was elected to the newly created National Cybersecurity Hall of Fame as one of the first set of inductees. He co-founded People For Internet Responsibility. He has taught courses at Darmstadt, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. See his website (http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann) for testimonies for the U.S. Senate and House and California state Senate and Legislature, papers, bibliography, further background, etc.

A broad scientific and technical consensus has emerged over the last several decades that deep geologic isolation can provide safe and secure disposal for nuclear high level waste and spent fuel. But given the stigma associated with nuclear waste disposal, credible scenarios exist where substantial inventories of high level waste and spent fuel will remain dispersed worldwide in interim surface storage at shut down and abandoned nuclear facilities, rendering these materials vulnerable to theft to recover fissile material and to accidental or intentional dispersion into the environment and transferring a large and unnecessary burden and risks onto future generations. With the detailed review of U.S. policy for managing nuclear waste completed by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future last year, the U.S. is now poised to restart its nuclear waste program. Legislation introduced in the Senate in 2012 provides a framework for a path forward that can address these major issues. This talk will review recommendations made by the BRC, and the current status of the U.S. nuclear waste program including actions likely to occur in the coming year.

Per F. Peterson is the William and Jean McCallum Floyd Professor of Nuclear Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Reno, Nevada, graduating from UNR with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1982. From 1982 to 1985 he worked at Bechtel on high-level nuclear waste processing, and then spent three years to complete masters and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Tokyo Institute of Technology working on topics in heat and mass transfer, he joined the Department of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley in 1990. There he served as a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator from 1990 to 1995; as chair of the Energy and Resources Group, an interdisciplinary graduate group, from 1998 to 2000; and as chair of Nuclear Engineering from 2000 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2012. Since 2002 he has co-chaired the Generation IV International Forum Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Working Group. He is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, is a Jason, and was appointed by the Obama Administration in February 2010 as a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. His specific research interests focus on topics in heat and mass transfer, fluid dynamics, and phase change. He has worked on problems in energy and environmental systems, including advanced reactors, inertial fusion, high-level nuclear waste processing, and nuclear materials management and security.

About the Topic: There remain persistent shortcomings in U.S. government and nongovernment assessments of biological weapons threats—shortcomings with important national security implications.  This long track record showing a consistent pattern of error regarding bioweapons threats stems from a striking conformity in judgments about biotechnology and its possible uses. Government and nongovernment analysts assert that the increasing ease, pace, and diffusion of biotechnology is creating a growing, elusive, and more technologically advanced set of bioweapons threats. But this conclusion fails to incorporate crucial social factors that can powerfully shape the development, use, and evaluation of biotechnology for weapons purposes. To illustrate these points, Vogel will discuss the U.S. intelligence failures on Iraqi mobile bioweapons laboratories leading up to the 2003 Iraq War and illustrate the importance of using a sociotechnical understanding of bioweapons threats and its implications for threat assessments and policymaking. 

About the Speaker: Kathleen Vogel is an associate professor at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science & Technology Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.  Dr. Vogel studies the production of knowledge on technical security policy issues.  Her recent book with The Johns Hopkins University Press, Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?  A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats, examines the social context and processes of how U.S. governmental and non-governmental analysts produce knowledge about contemporary biological weapons threats.  Dr. Vogel received her PhD in biological chemistry from Princeton University.