[NA-Discuss] MIT Spam Conference Agenda Posted

[Garth Bruen at KnujOn]

Hello North American At-Large,

Believe it or not, we are winning the spam war inch by inch. But this
isn’t being through passive network security alone. Spam is not a
random independent variable; it is deeply connected to other kinds of
online abuse and crime that can only be thwarted by identifying the
players and confronting them. It is with this spirit we are seeking to
reinvigorate the anti-spam effort, move in a new direction, and develop
a suite of tools based on collection, analysis and enforcement. You can
be a part of the solution by joining us at the MIT Spam Conference in
Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 26 and 27.

The final list of accepted papers and agenda are now available (see:
http://www.knujon.com/mit_spamconf2009.html#schedule). KnujOn’s Dr.
Robert Bruen will be leading the discussion Thursday morning by
detailing a cascade of anti-spam successes of the past year that started
with he disclosure of massive abuse at a minority of providers and ended
with the total shutdown of several of those providers. From this case we
have been able to identify key policy failures in the Internet
infrastructure and initiate policy-based corrections for those failures.
A small cadre of dedicated professionals did this stunning work and
continues to push against the tide of abuse and fraud. The discussion
will follow with a charge from myself, Garth Bruen, to build on these
successes with the help of new thought and expanded participation. The
charge will encourage developers to create and rework anti-spam tools to
utilize a set of positive principles that have guided our work on the
problem, the first principle being: “Spam is not an impossible problem
to solve.” The second principle is: “It is possible to collect and
process every piece of spam email for proper enforcement.” Along with
these principles and others we will map the policy structure and
architecture to highlight places where new tools and proactive efforts
could make a difference.

The 14 brilliant presenters that follow KnujOn’s keynote are to
present rigorous research and proposals that will set a new course for
Anti-spam, one that is needed in our ever-expanding international
network daily fraught with fresh criminal misdeeds. Be part of this
discussion

This conference is of interest to security professionals, network
administrators, service providers, law enforcement, public policy
developers, system engineers, software developers, consumer advocates,
intellectual property attorneys, intelligence analysts, recruiters,
product safety advocates, technology media, business development,
venture capital, financial transaction specialists, and any other
profession who wants a better Internet. 

Be sure to register so you can attend the Comcast-sponsored event
Thursday night(it’s all free). Registration instructions:
http://projects.csail.mit.edu/spamconf/


Sincerely, Garth Bruen


-------------------------------------
Collect, analyze, enforce, repeat...

Garth Bruen
gbruen at knujon.com
http://www.knujon.com
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/149/724

ICANN, Mexico City - March 1-6
http://mex.icann.org/
MIT Spam Conference, Cambridge Mass. - March 26-27
http://projects.csail.mit.edu/spamconf/

Dr. Robert Bruen at:
MAAWG, San Francisco, CA - February 17-19
http://www.maawg.org/news/GeneralMeeting_Feb09/
RSA, San Francisco, CA - April 20-24
https://365.rsaconference.com/index.jspa
Antispyware Coalition, Washington D.C. - May 19
http://www.antispywarecoalition.org/events/index.htm