First International Alternative Workshop on Aggressive Computing and Security

The no-limit workshop

“Enhancing security with the attacker’s mind – Orthodoxy and self confidence are weaknesses”

"There is no such thing as forbidden knowledge, only forbidden use of knowledge"

iAWACS

ESIEA - Laval - 23rd to 25th October 2009

  • NEW : iAWACS 2009 slides are available
  • NEW : DEBRIEF @ HACK.LU 2009 slides are available
  • NEW : PWN2RM CHALLENGE RESULTS slides are available
  • NEW Philippe Langlois just cancelled his venue. His talk will be replaced by a talk given by Gregoire Jacob : "Functional Polymorphism Engines: formalization, implementation and use cases". All other speakers have confirmed their venue.
  • NEW A last paper accepted (new operational cryptanalysis results from Cédric Tavernier). See updated program.
  • NEW Follow iAWACS2009 on twitter.
  • NEW Definitive program added. Discover the Opening Talk. Do not wait for registering. If you dare... well register for the AV challenge as well. Nice awards to win. If no courageous volunteers, another contest will be organized onsite. Note that tutorials of Friday 23rd are free to any registered attendee.
  • Student fee added: 180 euros (200 euros onsite)
  • List of Accepted papers and Talks. The final program will published later.
  • Authors must fill and send the Copyright Form
  • To attend the conference you must register (authors must also register even if they do not pay the registration fee). Send the Registration Form
  • Information about the venue and the conference accomodation are available here

Thinking security can not be done without adopting a preferential mode of thought of the attacker. A system cannot be defended if we do not know how to attack it. If the theory is still an interesting approach to formalize things, the operational approach must be the ultimate goal: to talk about security is meaningless if we do not actually do security. In recent years the major security conferences in the subjects preferred to select papers according to fashion topics, conforming to something like orthodoxy and organize selection as beauty contests. As a result excellent yet unorthodox scientific papers are often rejected and sink into oblivion. The first international Alternative Workshop in Aggressive Computing and Security (iAWACS'09) aims to focus on this vision and to allow researchers and specialists to present relevant research works, with interesting results and operational (theoretical and/or applied) in the field of security. The different points of view, away from unconventional fashion and orthodoxy are particularly welcome. The aim is also to promote discussion of ideas around these topics.

Articles submitted will be selected according to the following criteria:

  • Interest and scientific/technical correctness/accuracy,
  • New results,
  • Operational quality
  • Regarding this last point, the authors should give all information and conditions for reproducibility of results they intend to present. This may include, during the selection phase by the reviewers, assessments based on challenges to the authors by the reviewers. iAwacs is not just another hackers workshop where the last exploit is disclosed. The aim of the conference is to make security concepts evolves through both the attacker’s view AND a thorough formalization backed by experimental results.

    The main topics covered (list not exhaustive) are:

  • Cryptanalysis techniques
  • Steganalysis techniques
  • Malicious cryptography
  • Advances computer virology techniques (malware, backdoor…)
  • Active security product analysis and testing
  • Active security auditing
  • Mathematical concepts and applications with respect to the attacker’s view
  • Cyberwarfare techniques
  • Cryptographic and steganography techniques
  • Invisible trap/bacdoor techniques in algorithms and applications
  • Implementation attacks
  • Interception/eavesdropping techniques
  • Forensics and anti-forensics techniques
  • Tempest and anti-tempest techniques
  • InfoOps techniques
  • Satellite hijacking
  • Articles should be submitted in electronic format, preferably in LaTeX format, in English. Submission of Word/OOwriter documents is accepted. The address for submission is iawacs2009@esiea.fr Submissions under hidden identities or aliases are not allowed.A technical challenge will be organized during the conference. Attendees who want to participate must register on site. For this first edition, the theme we have chosen is "Evaluation against active antivirus software to evaluate their resistance to removal by a malicious code." All results will be shared with publishers of antivirus concerned. The technical details of the challenge will be announced later.

    Important dates :

  • Submission deadline: July 15th, 2009
  • Notification deadline: August 20th, 2009
  • Final manuscript submission for inclusion into the proceedings: September 20th, 2009
  • Conference dates: October 23rd – 25th, 2009
  • The conference proceedings will be published with ISBN by the Presses Techniques ESIEA. They will be given to registered participants at the conference and can then be bought on the conference homepage.The conference will be held at Ecole Supérieure en Informatique, Electronique et Automatique, in Laval from Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th, 2009 morning. Each author will have 45 minutes of speaking time, each presentation will be followed by a technical discussion between speakers and listeners. Laval is nice medieval city located 250 km west from Paris and can be reach by high speed train (TGV) from Paris International Airport.

    Conference registration amount to 400 euros (includes proceedings, coffee breaks, lunches, cocktail reception, social events on Friday evening and Saturday evening, the conference, shuttle bus between the hotels and the conference venue).

    Program Chair : Éric Filiol

    Program Co-Chair : Robert Erra

    Contacts :

  • Program chair: iawacs2009@esiea.fr
  • Organization comitee: iawacs2009_orga@esiea.fr
  • Press contact: iawacs2009_press@esiea.fr
  • First International Alternative Workshop on Aggressive Computing and Security