Speakers
If you are having trouble deciding which lectures to attend, you can find a more detailed description about the lecture topics and their lecturers on this page!
Biography
Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, an email encryption software package. Originally designed as a human rights tool, PGP was published for free on the Internet in 1991. This made Zimmermann the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread worldwide. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world. After the government dropped its case in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc. That company was acquired by Network Associates Inc (NAI) in 1997. In 2002 PGP was acquired from NAI by a new company called PGP Corporation, where Zimmermann served as special advisor and consultant until its acquisition by Symantec in 2010. Since 2004, his focus has been on secure telephony for the Internet, developing the ZRTP protocol and creating products that use it, including Silent Phone and Zfone. Zimmermann is Co-founder of Silent Circle, a provider of secure communications services, and is a partner at Mjolnir Ventures, a European venture fund specializing in cyber security. Zimmermann teaches crypto at Delft University of Technology's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, in the Netherlands.Abstract
Just a few years ago, I would start the first lecture in my course on security by telling the students that the security problems are caused by bad software. Most software is full of security holes. Indeed, much research is directed at removing these bugs. But is this sufficient? In this talk, I will discuss a new wave of vulnerabilities that allow attackers to exploit "perfect" (bugless) software by making use of bizarre effects in common hardware.
Biography
Herbert Bos is professor of Systems and Network Security at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where he heads the VUSec research group. He obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University Computer Laboratory (UK). Coming from a systems background, he drifted into security a few years ago and never left. CSrankings.org listed the group as the #1 research group in Computer Security in the world over 2016. He is very proud of his (former) students, three of whom have won the Roger Needham Ph.D. Award for best Ph.D. thesis in systems in Europe.Abstract
Many important protocols for cryptography that are based on mathematics are dependent on properties of prime numbers. In particular, they often rely for their security on the difficulty of certain problems, such as determining discrete logarithms in certain groups, or finding the order of (elements in) those groups, defined in terms of `large' prime numbers; in many cases prime factorisation is a bottleneck in the computations. The aim of this talk is to provide a feeling for what `large prime numbers' are: how hard is it to find them and to distinguish them from composite numbers? What properties of primes are essential and which algorithms are used? At what size of parameters is it still possible to deal with the cryptographic challenges using a publicly available, but highly developed, computer algebra system?
Biography
Wieb Bosma (Texel, 1958) studied mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, where he also wrote his Ph.D. thesis (on an algorithm for primality proving). After that, he worked for seven years at the University of Sydney, Australia, on the development of the language for the computer algebra system Magma, while also responsible for the number theoretic and combinatorial algorithms implemented in that system. Currently, he is associate professor in Computer Algebra at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he teaches Mathematics and conducts research on algorithms and automata, on the border of Mathematics and Computer Science. He is also associated with the Cryptology group of Ronald Cramer at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam.Abstract
Cyber threats and cyber-attacks pop up in the media every day. Furthermore, they seem to be getting more and more sophisticated over time. Who are performing these attacks nowadays? And are we lost already because of their complexity or can we do something about them? In this presentation, we will try to answer these questions by looking into cyber trends and the numbers supporting them.
Biography
Bart is Consulting Manager at Thales Cyber security and has been active for over 10 years in the Cyber security area. During this time he advised numerous national and international customers regarding Cyber security. His focus has been on threat and vulnerability management, security monitoring, risk mitigation and reviewing and auditing. Prior to his time at Thales, he worked as Security consultant at PwC (2007-2012).Abstract
Internet connected cars, toys and even medical tools have already been shown to be vulnerable. And new vulnerabilities are being found every day, as quickly as manufacturers can patch them. In the very near future, we could be living in homes which are constantly collecting knowledge about everything we do – when we sleep, where we are in the house at any time of the day, and how long we leave our homes empty for. Potential dangers include hackers selling this information to the highest bidder on the dark web – and in a nightmare scenario perhaps even offering to unlock your doors or windows remotely at a pre-agreed time. If an attacker is being creepy rather than trying to actually physically get at you or your property, they could access remotely controlled devices such as security cameras or baby monitors, or even just turn lights on and off in the middle of the night. In this digital age, the risk of botnets through malware infected IoT devices is very real. In this talk, the speaker will discuss the importance of keeping those devices safe and secure, and how to protect You from being vulnerable, not to be an invisible part of a large zombie operations…the botnet.
Biography
Principal Security Advisor at UL Transaction Security (Netherlands) and founder and lead information security engineer of Zero Science Lab, a Macedonian information security research and development laboratory. Gjoko has been active in the “security industry” for almost 13 years. He has experience in many fields in cyber security including: penetration testing, malware analysis, vulnerability and exploit research, incident handling, fuzzing, binary exploitation, embedded operating systems, ICS/SCADA hacking, ethical hacking instructor, and so on. During the last 5 years, he has been involved in international projects with governments and large organizations around the globe, dealing with security hardening and evaluation of smart systems and devices, applications and networks. At UL-TS, he likes to find zero-days in various IoT devices and embedded systems, and occasionally engage in some CTF challenges and bug bounty programs.Abstract
When the hype around Bitcoin subsided and people started to take a closer look, many quickly realized the tremendous potential of the underlying Blockchain technology. As ING is dedicated to staying a step ahead and always looking for solutions to better serve our customers, naturally we are actively working on Blockchain technology as well. One area where we can definitely see great value of Blockchain technology is through the use of smart contracts. Within ING we are working on modelling a variety of financial products into smart contracts. This includes translating legal prose into code, incorporating large numbers of conditions, connecting contracts to external data sources for verification and then executing these contracts between multiple parties in one atomic action. In this talk Cees van Wijk will explain what Blockchain is, why it's disruptive and how it works.
Biography
Cees van Wijk is IT specialist in the ING’s global Blockchain-team. He has extensive experience in software development, cryptography and architecture and is a frequent public speaker. Within ING's Blockchain-team Cees investigates various different Blockchain-platforms and realised a variety of financial use cases with Blockchain and smart contracts.