18 August 2008

Hackers and Academics Need to Work Together

Eleanor Dallaway

Hackers and academics need to start talking and work together to benefit the industry, Jon Callas, CTO of PGP, told Eleanor Dallaway at Black Hat Las Vegas.

“The two groups are producing similar work and need to start talking, which is what we’re trying to encourage” said Callas. “It will happen – it’s not that hard to write up what you’ve done, what you find out”.

“A lack of monetary funding is being given to the universities for research, which PGP is looking in to funding. Independent hackers, on the other hand, are accused of being in it to make a name for themselves”.

“Full disclosure of research is the correct thing to do”, Callas insisted.

“We need university and individual research to provide a check on all of the vendor research out there”, said Callas, despite arguing that not all research is necessarily tainted because it’s from a vendor.

The unification of academic and hacker work “would produce better documentation. New work and content would evolve, and would be the grounds for better presentations”.

Callas argued that currently, presentations at conferences are being repeated with minor results. “There are so many ‘buffer overflow attack’ talks – it’s not interesting. Another ‘bug in the driver’ presentation after presentation – it’s just not worth an hour’s discussion”. The convergence of hacker and academic work, he believes, will go some way towards solving this problem.

“The Black Hat security programme this year however, has been extraordinarily good”, Callas said. “The schedule has been good, and the twenty-minute talks are allowing more people to get involved”.

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