MEETING INTRODUCTION
Unigroup's May 2010 presentation will be on "EZ-VPN", which is an IPsec Configuration Tool described in the paper "EZ-VPN: Simple IPsec Configuration" by Shreyas Srivatsan and Stephen M. Bellovin. Our speaker, Maritza Johnson, has been working with these individuals on an empirical evaluation of this tool as part of a research project at Columbia University.
The abstract of the EZ-VPN paper says:
The IPsec protocol promised easy, ubiquitous encryption. That has
never happened. For the most part, IPsec usage is confined to VPNs
for road warriors, largely due to needless configuration complexity
and incompatible implementations. We have designed a simple VPN
configuration language that hides the unwanted complexities.
Virtually no options are necessary or possible. The administrator
specifies the absolute minimum of information: the authorized hosts,
their operating systems, and a little about the network topology;
everything else, including certificate generation, is automatic.
Our implementation includes a multi-target compiler, which generates
implementation-specific configuration files for two different
platforms; others are easy to add.
Maritza Johnson intends to do a hands-on demonstration of the EZ-VPN tool, with audience participation regarding downloading and using the tool, then having a subsequent review of the generated IPsec configurations. If you bring a notebook computer with WiFi Internet Access to the Unigroup meeting, we hope to have you participate in downloading and using the EZ-VPN tool. Requirements to participate in the demo: gcc, lex, yacc (bison), openssl. Optional: graphviz to display generated topology.
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DIRECTIONS
Location:
The Cooper Union (http://www.cooper.edu)
School of Engineering (*** New Building ***)
41 Cooper Square (3rd Avenue @ 7th Street, between 6th & 7th Streets)
East Village, Manhattan
New York City
Meeting Room: 504CS
Located on the East side of Cooper Square. Look for the
new building with the non-traditional appearance.
Entrance is at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 7th Street.
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Enter the building, check in with the guard at the lobby for
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'6' to Astor Place (stops right at The Cooper Union),
then walk 1 block East and 1 block South.
'R' to 8th Street, then walk about 2 blocks East
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'4/5/6/R/N/Q' to Union Square, then walk South and East.
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Topic: Computer Network Security: IPsec Configuration and EZ-VPN
Talk Outline:
The EZ-VPN tool provides a simple configuration language to generate IPsec configuration files. A primary goal was to reduce the overhead and decisions involved in configuring IPsec. The tool makes "smarter" default decisions and provides a configuration language for changing the defaults.
References & Web Resources:
1) Maritza Johnson:
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~maritzaj/
2) GraphViz:
http://graphviz.org
http://graphviz.org/Download..php
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY
Maritza Johnson is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University. Her research interests are in Security and Human-Computer Interaction, more specifically usable policy management. Her research adviser is Steve Bellovin and she is a member of the Systems Security Center at Columbia University. She is also the president of Columbia Women in Computer Science and is the finance chair for GSAC. She studied computer science at University of San Diego as an undergrad.
COMPANY BIOGRAPHY
The Systems Security Center (SSC) is a research organization in network/systems security at Columbia University. Our research emphasis spans a wide diversity of security-related topics, with an objective to provide security and robustness guarantees for systems and networks in response to anomalous conditions and malicious attacks.
For more information about Columbia University, visit: http://www.cs.columbia.edu.
GIVEAWAYS
We have some OpenSolaris Books and CD-ROMs from our friends at the local NYC Sun Microsystems Office.
FEE SCHEDULE
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FOOD AND REFRESHMENTS
Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served. This includes "wraps" such as turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna and grilled vegetables as well as assorted salads (potato, tossed, pasta, etc), cookies, brownies, bottled water and assorted beverages.
Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!
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