Presented at
DEF CON 15 (2007),
Aug. 3, 2007, noon
(50 minutes)
Profit and motive for spyware will increase drastically over the next three years. How are federal agencies and corporations planning for this surge? What are next big technological breakthroughs? How can we prepare?
Presenters:
-
Mario Vuksan
- Director of Knowledgebase Services, Bit9
Mario Vuksan, Director of Knowledgebase Services, Bit9
Mario Vuksan is the Director of Knowledgebase Services at Bit9, a leading provider of application and device control solutions, where he has helped create the world's largest collection of actionable intelligence about software. Before Bit9, Vuksan was Program Manager and Consulting Engineer at Groove Networks (acquired by Microsoft), working on Web based solutions, P2P management, and integration servers. Before Groove Networks, Vuksan developed one of the first Web 2.0 applications at 1414c, a spin-off from PictureTel. He received a bachelor's degree in Mathematics, Art History, and Computer Science from Swarthmore College and a master's degree in Art History from Boston University.
-
Eileen Harrington
- Deputy Director, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection
Eileen Harrington, Deputy Director, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection
Eileen Harrington, an attorney, is Deputy Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. The Bureau of Consumer Protection¹s mandate is to protect consumers from deceptive, unfair, or fraudulent practices. The Bureau enforces a variety of consumer protection laws enacted by Congress, as well as trade regulation rules issued by the Commission. Its actions include individual company and industry-wide investigations, administrative and federal court litigation, rulemaking proceedings, and consumer and business education. In addition, the Bureau contributes to the Commission¹s on-going efforts to inform Congress and other government entities of the impact that proposed actions could have on consumers.
Prior to becoming Deputy Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Ms. Harrington was Associate Director for Marketing Practices. In that role, she led the Commission¹s consumer fraud law enforcement effort, and oversaw some of its most visible regulatory work, including the National Do Not Call initiative and implementation of the CAN-SPAM Act. She also led development of the Commission¹s Internet Fraud enforcement program and coordinated domestic and international law enforcement programs to detect and halt fraud against consumers on the Internet.
Ms. Harrington joined the FTC as Assistant Director for Marketing Practices in 1987, and served as Associate Director for Marketing Practices from 1991 to 2005. In 1997, President Clinton conferred on Ms. Harrington the rank of Distinguished Executive in the Senior Executive Service for "sustained extraordinary accomplishments" in organizing and leading interagency enforcement, education and regulatory efforts to halt consumer fraud. In 2004, she was awarded a Service to America Medal for her work on the National Do Not Call Registry.
-
Ben Edelman
- Harvard Business School
Ben Edelman, Harvard Business School
Ben Edelman is an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit.
Ben's current research includes analyzing methods and effects of spyware, with a focus on installation methods and revenue sources. Ben has documented advertisers supporting spyware, advertising intermediaries funding spyware, affiliate commission fraud, and click fraud.
More generally, Ben is interested in the evolving mix of public and private forces shaping the Internet -- how private parties and central authorities seek to change users Internet experience. In this vein, Ben tabulated registrations in new TLDs and tracked Internet filtering efforts by governments worldwide.
Ben's academic research focuses on Internet advertising. Looking at pay-per-click auctions for online advertising, Ben has analyzed search engines market designs, bidders' strategies, and possible improvements to these large and growing marketplaces. Ben's recent academic work also includes designing compensation structures to deter advertising fraud, and critiquing online "safety" certifications that fail to adequately protect users.
Ben was previously a Student Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where his projects included analyzing the formative documents and activities of ICANN, running Berkman Center webcasts, and developing software tools for real-time use in meetings, classes, and special events. He oversaw ICANN Public Meeting webcasts and operated the technology used at ICANN's first twelve quarterly meetings. Ben wrote about domain name politics, particularly in the context of expired domain names subsequently used for pornography and registered with false WHOIS data. He developed methods for testing Internet filtering worldwide, without leaving his office, publishing reports on filtering in China and in Saudi Arabia.
Ben has served as a consultant and testifying expert for a variety of clients, including the ACLU, the City of Los Angeles, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Football League, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Wells Fargo.
Ben holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Economics at Harvard University, a J.D. from the Harvard Law School, an A.M. in Statistics from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College (summa cum laude). He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar.
-
Ari Schwartz, Moderator
- Deputy Director, the Center for Democracy and Technology
Ari Schwartz, Deputy Director, the Center for Democracy and Technology
Ari Schwartz is the Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). Schwartz's work focuses on increasing individual control over personal and public information. He promotes privacy protections in the digital age and expanding access to government information via the Internet. He regularly testifies before Congress and Executive Branch Agencies on these issues.
Schwartz also leads the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) , anti-spyware software companies, academics, and public interest groups dedicated to defeating spyware. In 2006, Schwartz won the RSA award for Excellence in Public Policy for his work building the ASC and other efforts against spyware.
Links:
Similar Presentations: