DefCon and DerbyCon Seminar

Dr. Andy Dozier attended the DefCon conference in Las Vegas on August 9, and the DerbyCon conference this past weekend in Louisville, KY. These “Cons” are conferences in which the “hacker” community gathers and mingles with corporate America. The DefCon and DerbyCon are quite unlike any conferences that the academic community may have attended in the past. They are very large gatherings of an enthusiastic subculture of network and communication security specialists. Most of the presentations at these conferences dealt with network/server/client attack strategies, penetration testing, and defense strategies. Other subjects such as lock picking and car hacking were also covered. The sessions were attended by Dr. Dozier and two of his students: Andrew Bryant and Paul Frederick. This seminar will address the logistics of hacker conferences, how they differ from typical IEEE or ACM conferences, highlights of the topics covered, and lessons learned. It will be an eye opener. Dr. Dozier will provide opening remarks and observations, and will be followed by Andrew Bryant and Paul Frederick. Questions and discussion are encouraged.

Biography

Dr. Dozier received his BS, MS, and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1974, after conducting research into the electronic properties of amorphous semiconductors. After graduating, he was hired by the Micro-electronic Center (MEC) of the Electronic Systems Group at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, as a process engineer, working on space communication electronics. After more than 20 years at TRW (now Northrup Grumman) and Hughes Aircraft, Dr. Dozier transitioned into the commercial networking and communication industry, specializing in network design, equipment sales, and application engineering. In 1998, he was hired by the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (EECS), where he developed courses in networking and communications, and the capstone design project courses for EECS. With over 20 years’ experience in networking and communications from device fabrication, system integration, project management, to network design, Dr. Dozier is currently leveraging his industrial background towards the development of novel capstone design and networking courses in ECE at the Speed School.