"The One-Hour Guide to Stuxnet"
-- Carey Nachenberg, Semantec Corporation
Note: Nachenberg had several talks he was willing to give. Before the seminar, he took a poll and the audience selected his talk on the Stuxnet virus. Thus, the abstract below corresponds to the talk he was originally going to give, but not the talk he actually gave. He graciously made the slides for both talks available. See the links below.
Abstract (for talk on "Three Cool Algorithms You've Never Heard Of")
In this talk, Nachenberg will discuss three interesting abstract data types (ADTs) that you're unlikely to learn about in your algorithms 101 class: Metric Trees, Fuzzy Hashing and Bloom Filters.
What are these ADTs and when are they typically used? Metric Trees and Fuzzy Hashing are two alternate approaches that can be used to quickly find "related" items - those that are not an exact match but a close match to a sought-after item - in logarithmic or constant time. Typically, engineers are used to searching for exact matches (e.g., "find Shawn Newsam's record"), but what if you'd like to search for anything that is "close" to the item you're searching for (e.g., "find names that are close to Shaxn Newswm")? These two algorithms can help.
In contrast, the last ADT, the Bloom Filter, is a space-efficient set-membership ADT. Bloom Filters enable you to quickly determine if an item (e.g., an IP address) is contained in a set (e.g., a set of millions of IP addresses) using extremely little RAM - this ADT is useful on RAM-constrained systems like embedded systems where memory is at a premium. If you're familiar with basic data structures (e.g., hash tables and binary trees) and have a rudimentary math background, you should find this talk thought provoking, and hopefully, an entertaining diversion!
Biography
Nachenberg is a leading cyber security expert and a co-inventor of Norton Antivirus – the world’s most popular computer security product. Selected for Computerworld magazine’s “40 Under 40 - 40 Innovative IT People to Watch” and winner of the The Wall Street Journal’s 2010 Technology Innovation Award (computer security category) for his innovations in the security field, Nachenberg’s technology collectively protects hundreds of millions of computers worldwide. His work in the security field has garnered him more than 70 U.S. patents.
Nachenberg holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from UCLA, where he continues to serve as an adjunct assistant professor
