[Fwd: Computer Science Seminar Series: Monday March 1, 2004]

[ Late notice, I know, my bad... -d ]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Computer Science Seminar Series: Monday March 1, 2004
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 09:56:13 -0500

Computer Science Seminar Series Presents

Title:    Enabling Effective Trust Judgments

Speaker:  Sean Smith
           Department of Computer Science
           Dartmouth College
           6211 Sudikoff Laboratory
           Hanover, NH 03755-3510 USA
           sws-bJGkzYaaMJvEkZP4S/[email protected]

Date:     Mon, March 1st, 2004
Time:     11:15 a.m. - 12:05 pm
Location: 110 Kalkin

Hosted by computer security lab

Abstract:

A key part of making our society's information infrastructure work is enabling 
the parties involved---human users as well as programs--- to make effective 
trust judgments about each other. Should A trust B for action X? If it's all 
just wires and bits, how can A know? This problem
is made even messier by the emerging multiplicity of users, roles, machines, 
administrative domains, application contexts, and opinions about what 
constitutes valid grounds for trust.


Over the past several years, my students and I have been exploring the 
technological issues underlying effective trust judgments. This talk surveys 
some of our research, organized along three avenues:

- Why should we trust what's happening at a remote server? (I'll discuss
our work designing and building private information servers.)

- How do we transmit the information necessary for effective trust
judgment in complex scenarios?
(I'll discuss our work in using hybrid PKI for decentralized delegation
of authorization in wireless networks.)

- Do clients provide the right information and signals to enable
effective judgment? (I'll discuss some of our experiences showing
the surprising insecurity of browsers and SSL.)

URL: http://www.cs.uvm.edu/seminars/seminar_series.shtml