Niels Provos
Encyclopedia
Niels Provos is a researcher in the areas of secure systems, malware
and cryptography
. He is currently a Principal Software Engineer at Google
. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Michigan
.
He is the author of numerous software packages, including the libevent
event driven programming system, the Systrace
access control system, the honeyd
honeypot system, the StegDetect steganography
detector, the SpyBye malware detector, and many others. He is also the creator of the bcrypt
adaptive cryptographic hash function, and was for many years a contributor to the OpenBSD
project.
Provos has been an outspoken critic of the effect of the DMCA and similar laws on security researchers, arguing that they threaten to make criminals of people conducting legitimate security research.
Dr. Provos has also served as the Program Chair of the Usenix Security Symposium, on the program committees of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, ACM
SIGCOMM
, and numerous other conferences, and served on the board of directors of Usenix
from 2006 to 2010.
Malware
Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
and cryptography
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
. He is currently a Principal Software Engineer at Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
.
He is the author of numerous software packages, including the libevent
Libevent
libevent is an asynchronous event notification software library.The libevent API provides a mechanism to execute a callback function when a specific event occurs on a file descriptor or after a timeout has been reached. Furthermore, libevent also supports callbacks due to signals or regular...
event driven programming system, the Systrace
Systrace
Systrace is a computer security utility which limits an application's access to the system by enforcing access policies for system calls. This can mitigate the effects of buffer overflows and other security vulnerabilities...
access control system, the honeyd
Honeyd
Honeyd is an open source computer program created by Niels Provos that allows a user to set up and run multiple virtual hosts on a computer network. These virtual hosts can be configured to mimic several different types of servers, allowing the user to simulate an infinite number of computer...
honeypot system, the StegDetect steganography
Steganography
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity...
detector, the SpyBye malware detector, and many others. He is also the creator of the bcrypt
Bcrypt
bcrypt is an adaptive cryptographic hash function for passwords designed by Niels Provos and David Mazières, based on the Blowfish cipher, and presented at USENIX in 1999...
adaptive cryptographic hash function, and was for many years a contributor to the OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
project.
Provos has been an outspoken critic of the effect of the DMCA and similar laws on security researchers, arguing that they threaten to make criminals of people conducting legitimate security research.
Dr. Provos has also served as the Program Chair of the Usenix Security Symposium, on the program committees of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, ACM
ACM
ACM is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* Alkyl acrylate copolymer, a type of rubber commonly found in automotive transmissions and hoses* Arnold-Chiari malformation* Asbestos Containing Material* Association for Computing Machinery...
SIGCOMM
SIGCOMM
SIGCOMM is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communications, which specializes in the field of communication and computer networks. It is also the name of an annual 'flagship' conference, organized by SIGCOMM, which is considered to be the leading conference...
, and numerous other conferences, and served on the board of directors of Usenix
USENIX
-External links:* *...
from 2006 to 2010.
Education
- Ph.D., Computer Science & Engineering, August 2003, University of Michigan (Dissertation: "Statistical Steganalysis")
- Diplom in Mathematics, August 1998, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. (Masters in Mathematics). (Thesis: "Cryptography, especially the RSA algorithm on elliptic curves and Z/nZ")
- Vordiplom in Mathematics, March 1995,Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
- Vordiplom in Physics, March 1995, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Selected Publications
- All Your iFrames Point to Us Niels Provos, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Moheeb Rajab and Fabian Monrose, 17th USENIX Security Symposium, August 2008.
- The Ghost in the Browser: Analysis of Web-based Malware Niels Provos, Dean McNamee, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Ke Wang, and Nagendra Modadugu, USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Understanding Botnets, April 2007.
- Detecting Steganographic Content on the Internet Niels Provos and Peter Honeyman, ISOC NDSS'02, San Diego, CA, February 2002