ECS and DSoc Guest Lectures

Date: 2021-11-24

Difficulty: N/A

Delivered By: ECS (Dr Denis Nicole) and DSoc (Dr Leonardo Aniello)

Overview

SUCSS is excited to welcome ECS and DSoc (the Southampton Decentralised Society) to deliver our second and third guest lectures of the year!

The guest lectures will replace our usual session, but will still be held in 67/1037 from 6-8pm. If you're not able to attend in-person, the talks will also be livestreamed on Discord and recorded.

ECS Lecture

Passwords and Windows Security - Dr Denis Nicole

Abstract: Passwords are a nightmare for all of us, yet we are making little progress with replacing them. From the very worst 1234 PINs to our best effort 32 byte random keys, they give us grief. What can we do to secure ourselves? To secure our non-geek loved ones? How secure are real passwords? Do hardware tokens help? Why is Windows worse than Linux? Does BitLocker help, and how to avoid an Azure tenancy. How has Bitcoin made things even worse? We'll hack our way through the password jungle, before Bitcoin kills all the trees.

You can find out more about Denis here.

DSoc Lecture

Permissioned vs Permissionless Blockchains - Dr Leonardo Aniello

Abstract: This talk will start with a very brief introduction on blockchain, then it will elaborate on the differences between permissionless blockchain (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum) and permissioned blockchain (such as those based on the Hyperledger Fabric framework). Trade-offs exist between the two; for example, while the former offers stronger decentralisation, the latter provides much better performance: the choice ultimately depends on the use case-specific requirements. Finally, a very concise overview will be given on the active research directions on blockchain within the ECS Cyber Security research group.

You can find out more about Leonardo here. You can join the DSoc Discord here.