DECEMBER 2012 vOL. 37, NO. 6 Conference Reports ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENT 21st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX and that they also knew what the US was doing (capabilities) Security ’12) through the use of spies in the US and their interception of our ciphers (access). After considering all of these differ- Bellevue, WA August 8–10, 2012 ent criteria, cryptographers could then attempt to provide information assurance in the face of this particular enemy. Opening Remarks Again focusing on communications, they examined the Summarized by Rik Farrow (
[email protected]) security of the SAVILLE cipher and its usage in the VINSON Program Chair Tadayoshi Kohno (University of Washing- hand-held radio. Additionally, they really had time to do it ton) opened the conference by telling us that there were 222 right: the SAVILLE cipher was developed in the 1950s, evalu- papers submitted and 42 accepted. By replacing four invited ated in the 1960s, and then finally implemented in VINSON talks sessions with paper presentations, more papers could and deployed in 1976; this meant that they could look closely be accepted than in the past. at both the algorithm and its implementation to try to find When the conference began, there were 484 attendees; 84 potential attacks. students received travel grants using money provided by the In modern times, the field has once again changed dramati- National Science Foundation, with Google and Microsoft cally. One of the main catalysts for these changes was the being the next largest sponsors. introduction of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), which Best Paper awards went to “Mining Your Ps and Qs: Detec- was created through a competition held by NIST.