DECEMBER

LISA '06
www.usenix.org/events/lisa06/
December 3-8
Washington, D.C.

USENIX's annual Large Installation System Administration conference gathers security, network, storage and database administrators for training and networking opportunities. Birds of a Feather sessions are popular at USENIX events. Cory Doctorow, Fulbright chair at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, will be the keynote speaker.

FinSec
www.misti.com
December 4-6
New York City

Targeted toward security professionals in the financial services market, FinSec sessions address data leakage, fraud, software flaws and management of the regulatory environment. Thomas Dunbar, CSO of XL Capital, and Anish Bhimani, managing director of security for JPMorgan Chase, are keynote speakers. The one-day summit on data leakage closes out the event.

ACSAC
www.acsa-admin.org
December 11-15
Miami, Fla.

The 22nd Annual Computer Security Applications Conference is an internationally recognized forum where practitioners, researchers and developers in information system security meet to learn and exchange practical ideas and experiences. SIAC's Dr. Dixie Baker is the distinguished practitioner, and Symantec's Brian Witten is the invited essayist. The conference includes three tracks, a workshop on host-based security assessments and various case studies.

FEBRUARY

RSA Conference 2007
www.rsaconference.com/2007/us/
February 5-9
San Francisco, Calif.

The annual RSA Conference returns to San Francisco in 2007 with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and EMC's Art Coviello among the keynote speakers. Tom Noonan of Internet Security Systems, John Swainson of CA and Symantec's John Thompson are other CEOs on the keynote docket. The conference features 19 tracks and more than 200 sessions. Mainstays like the Cryptographer's Panel and the RSA Gala are also prominent on the agenda.

The Morris Mistake

On Nov. 2, 1988, then-Cornell University graduate student Robert T. Morris released a 99-line program to prove that he could use sendmail to propagate an Internet worm and overwhelm Digital VAX and Sun 3 systems. It was the first worm to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability. But, a flaw in the code caused his experiment—now known infamously as the Morris worm—to bog down systems and infect nearly 10 percent of the Internet.