The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

The Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

News & Blogs

CERIAS director selected to advise U.S. President

Mon, June 23, 2003General

Eugene Spafford, director of CERIAS, has been selected to be a member of a committee that will advise President George W. Bush on information technology matters.



Accenture and CERIAS release Call to Action

Mon, June 16, 2003General

Accenture has just released the Security Call to Action and Executive Summary, from the 15 security experts who participated in the CERIAS Security Vision Roundtable.



CERIAS Launches Cassandra

Fri, May 23, 2003General

Cassandra is a tool made to manage profiles of services and applications on servers and networks. With these profiles, it searches a local copy of NIST’s ICAT database for vulnerabilities. Searches can be automated to run every night, and to email the results.

Because users may not want a list of vulnerabilities, relevant to their systems, to be sent in clear text email, there is the option of only getting a notification that new vulnerabilities have been found. With an SSL connection, a list can be retrieved from the Cassandra web site.

Cassandra can also do searches by time intervals, keywords, and for products that are not yet in the ICAT database. This provides you with a reasonable assurance that you will get notified if a new vulnerability is found in a product that is not yet listed by ICAT.

The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) gratefully acknowledges the contributions of its sponsors, and NIST for classifying CVE and CAN entries into ICAT and making the full ICAT database available to CERIAS.

Cassandra is available from https://cassandra.cerias.purdue.edu/



13th Annual FIRST Conference In Toulouse, France

Fri, May 23, 2003General

The conference will be a five day event, with two days of tutorials and three days of
technical sessions including refereed paper presentations, invited talks, and panel
discussions.


The presentations are international in scope and include the latest in incident response and prevention, vulnerability analysis, and computer security. Additionally, these events serve as the foundation for the improvement of computer security worldwide via the sharing of goals, ideas, and information. See the FIRST website for more information.



Diego Zamboni Earns Fellowship From IBM

Fri, May 23, 2003General

One of the Doctoral candidates at CERIAS is already making news headlines. Diego Zamboni was selected as the recipient of the Josef Raviv Fellowship from IBM.

The IBM Josef Raviv Memorial Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computer Science was created to honor Dr. Raviv, the founder and director of IBM’s Haifa Research Lab, who died in a car accident in 1999.  He had a distinguished research career in Information Theory and was a pioneer in the Israeli high-tech industry. For more information on Joe Raviv, see
http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/info/news_raviv.html.

IBM offers only one Raviv Fellowship each year to a recent Ph.D. who shows exceptional promise for a research career in computer science.  The fellowship will be for one year, with an opportunity for IBM to renew for an additional year.



NSA Releases Windows 2000 Security Documents

Fri, May 23, 2003General

The National Security Agency just released several guides, with several more to be added shortly, to help Department of Defense
organizations secure Windows 2000.  Many DoD organizations have adopted
the guides as standards.  Sample titles:

  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Network Architecture Guide
  • Guide to Securing Microsoft Windows 2000 DNS
  • Guide to Securing Microsoft Windows 2000 Active Directory

In a major departure from historic precedent, NSA is also making the
documents available to the security community outside the DoD.


You may download these documents directly from the NSA’s site.



CERIAS Offering FREE Seminars Again This Fall

Fri, May 23, 2003General

The security seminar has been held every semester since 1992 and invites people from all areas of computer security, forensics and criminal investigation to talk about what they do. For more details. see the seminar page.


This semester we will have local cable coverage (Lafayette, IN area) for the seminar every Wednesday afternoon including:

  • Simulcast on Purdue Channel 4 / 4:30-5:30 PM
  • Simulcast on URTAS Channel 15 / 4:30-5:30 PM
  • Tape Delay on Insight Channel 5 / 5:00-6:00 PM
  • Tape Delay on All 3 Channels / 6:00-7:00 PM

If you have any question or would like to present at the Security Seminar, please contact Dr. Sam Wagstaff.



Now You Can Add A CERIAS Sidebar

Fri, May 23, 2003General

If you would like instant access to what CERIAS has to offer and you are running Netscape 6 or later then check out our new sidebar. Simple to add and keeps you in touch with what is happening here at CERIAS.



Need Some Help Securing Your Website

Fri, May 23, 2003General

Space is limited in Securing Your Website, the first in a series of seminars this Fall. This day and a half course will provide you with practical tips and techniques for securing your website.

Topics that will be covered include:  Network Layout, Common Events or Exploits and Appropriate Responses, Determining Appropriate Server/OS Configurations for Your Needs, Securing the Host, Pitfalls to Avoid in Popular Application Services, Web Proxying, Browser Security, and System Monitoring.


Get your registration form filled out and get it in today.



CERIAS Awarded Scholarships For Service for 2002 & 2003

Fri, May 23, 2003General

Purdue has been awarded 10 of the scholarships that began in the Fall of 2001. Several of these are still available for Spring 2002.  Another 10 are for the fall of 2002, and then 10 more in fall of 2003.

Each fellowship will cover full tuition and fees for 2 years while the recipient pursues a MS degree with specialization in security. You can find out more about these scholarships and how to apply but hurry - time is running out to apply for next semester.