Popular press and other media

On this page I will collect articles and other publications about my research. I do not track this very closely, so I am sure this page is and will be very incomplete. While the reports in the press are not always accurate, it is nice to see there is some interest.

Despite the prodding of the university, I am very bad at keeping track of these things. I know this is not complete. If you know of of some news item that should be listed, let me know.

Miscellaneous interviews

  • 15/02/2012. Interview (Dutch) in de Automatisering Gids. Also available here.
  • 29/01/2012. Televison interview on Channel 4 News -- mostly about Anonymous.
  • 19/11/2011. Interview (well, some quotes) in the (Dutch) newspaper Nederlands Dagblad about cyber crime: Wees niet Naief op het Internet (p.14)
  • 07/09/2011. Interview in the (Dutch) newspaper Spits about the DigiNotar compromise.
  • 11-08-2011. Interview on (Dutch) television show RTL Boulevard on Anonymous.
  • 09/07/2011. Report and interview in (Dutch) newspaper Trouw about the hacking competition at VU.
  • 08/07/2011. Interview on (Dutch) radio 1 (NCRV Lunch) about the hacking competition at VU
  • 04/07/2011. Interview on (Dutch) radio (Veronica V-Radio) about the hacking competition at VU (click Blauwe Maandag 4-7-2011 19:00.mp3 -- starts at 51').
  • 08/07/2011. Interview in the (Dutch) newspaper Spits about mobile phones as target for hackers (frontpage)
  • 08/07/2011. Report and Interview in (Dutch) newspaper Het Parool about the hacking competition at VU
  • December 2010. An article in the Intermediair on Stuxnet (Dutch and not technical) .
  • October 2010. An article in the Ingenieur on Stuxnet (Dutch and not technical) .
  • ProfNews on Stuxnet Dutch and a digest of the Ingenieur article (watering down what little content there was)

    Reverse Engineering

    The new ERC project on reverse engineering, known as
    Rosetta, attracted a fair amount of attention even before it started. I will collect some of the
  • Hoe?zo! Radio (NTR) Interview on 13 December 2010: mostly about WikiLeaks, but also with a discussion about Rosetta.
  • The university put out a press release.
  • There was an article on tweakers (Dutch). Lots of reactions. Not always very informed.
  • Bits and Chips also published an article about the Rosetta project.

    Network monitoring and the hunt for worms and viruses

    The NoAH, Lobster, DeWorm, and NoAH projects attracted a lot of attention in the popular media. Clearly, there is interest in keeping our infrastructures safe.

    It seems some of this stuff featured in bizarre places. Here is the email sent by a colleague at the VU: "I learnt about the release of Argos last Monday by reading the LCD screens in tram 5. In between ads, weather forecasts and other similar stuff there was a news titled something like "De Internet is gebroken" which explained that an unnamed researcher from the VU had developped something to secure the Internet. Not much technical details, as you would expect from a general-public, 50-or-so word-long story ;-)"

    Radio

    So far, there have been several interviews and news items on national radio:
  • Jan 2005, 747am
  • Jan 2005, Radio1
  • Jan 2005, 3FM),
  • 17/1/2006, Radio1 Tros Online (Francisco van Jole, and Peter de Bie), about Argos.
  • 21/07/2007, Radio1 Tros Nieuwsshow (Victor Deconinck en Mieke van der Weij, and yes, the legendary Peter van Rossem!), about the alleged 25th anniversary of the computer virus
  • 11/01/2010, Radio 5, Teleac Hoe?Zo!: "De mobiele telefoon, de spion van de toekomst".
  • Hoe?zo! Radio (NTR) Interview on 13 December 2010: mostly about WikiLeaks, but also with a discussion about Rosetta.

    Books

    Argos is written about in the book Virtual Honeypots: From Botnet Tracking to Intrusion Detection by Niels Provos and Thorsten Holz (Chapter~2, high-interaction honeypots). The book is also available online from Safari.

    Popular press about Argos

    As always, I tend to be a little uncomfortable with the way things are sometimes portrayed in the popular media. Some of the reports in the past have portrayed us the people who are saving the world the world from doom! While this makes me feel heroic, it is often phrased a little less cautious than I would have liked. At any rate, as requested by the university and the projects, I am trying to collect links to these reports. So far I have managed to track down the following (many of of which discuss Argos):

  • An article in USENIX ;LOGIN: about Argos by Jeffrey Berg, Evan Teran, and Sam Stover, Investigating Argos.
  • Interview by Maurits Martijn for 'Vrij Nederland' (Dutch, Sept 1st 2008) about Cyber warfare.
  • I was interviewed by Anouck Vrouwe for 'De Ingenieur' (Dutch, to appear in beginning of 2008) about the plagues of the net.
  • Sam Stover writes (quite positively) about Argos in USENIX ';Login:' (October 2007)
  • Argos is mentioned on the Slashdot book review of Provos and Holz' book (July 2008). (In addition, the book is reviewed (and Argos mentioned) in the book review on Amazon on Amazon,November 2007)
  • Network World (the interview also appeared in Computer World): Why virtual honeypots are sweet. The interview talks about the book by Provos and Holz and explicitly mentions Argos (Interviewer: "The book also mentions Argos, developed at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. What is Argos?" Provos: "With Argos, you can detect a new attack without a signature. The Argos people did information-flow tracking or tainting to figure out if any information sent to the honeypot ends up influencing it inside.").
  • Bright magazine: Feature: "Labrats" (April 2006, Dutch, article about Argos).
  • Computable: Opsporing Verzocht (February 2006, Dutch, article about Argos).
  • Nu.nl: Vrije Universiteit werkt aan 'vaccin' voor internet (14/1/2006, Dutch).
  • Metro: Vrije Universiteit werkt aan 'vaccin' voor internet (14/1/2006, Dutch).
  • Spits: VU werkt aan 'vaccin' voor Internet (16/1/2006, Dutch).
  • Volkskrant: Groot onderzoek VU naar computervirussen (19/1/2005,Dutch).
  • RTLZ: Groot onderzoek VU naar computervirussen (19/1/2005,Dutch).
  • Telegraaf: Onderzoek naar computervirussen (19/1/2005,Dutch).
  • Computable Grootscheeps computervirusonderzoek bij de VU (20/1/2005,Dutch)
  • ComputerIdee: Universiteit doet onderzoek naar virussen (Dutch)
  • IDG Webwereld VU bindt de strijd aan met virussen en wormen (Dutch).
  • A somewhat longer interview-based article can be found at the EduSite (Dutch)
  • There was another interview in the Computable of 25/02/2006.
  • HCC!Magazine

    Blogs and targetted online publications

    Argos was blogged and talked about in different sites:

  • UK Honeynet Project blogs (March, 2008).
  • Geek Log
  • Honeyblog
  • Nepenthes/mwcollect news
  • SANS - Internet Storm Center
  • Network-secure (German)
  • Argos. Un emulador para capturar ataques 0day (Sergio Hernando, 12/03/06, Spanish)
  • Here is a presentation about Argos in Japanese. No idea what it says...
  • The gaetano Honeypots Archive
  • Mexican honeynet site
  • SWiK, June 07 2006
  • Del.icio.us
  • Astalavista Group Security Newsletter: Our EuroSys paper about Argos was recommended reading material in the Astalavista Group Security Newsletter ('Astalavista - the Underground' is a site that originates in the hackers community and is one of the most popular sites on security).
  • HoneyBlog reporting on SweetBait TR. I prefer the paper in Elsevier Computer Networks myself (to appear).
  • Worm blog also reporting on SweetBait TR. (Why don't they read the paper in Elsevier Computer Networks?.
  • www.honeypots.net features a description of Argos as well as a link to the Eurosys paper on Argos.

    Some attention for Minemu

  • Minemu received a lot of attention in a article on Tweakers.net.
  • Minemu also featured on Davi Ottenheimer's flyingpenguin

    Shelia is also mentioned in various places:

  • SecurityFocus (Feb'08): Jamie Riden and Christian Seifert mention Shelia in Infocus magazine
  • Secguru mentions shelia in this article
  • Wikipedia has a (longish) entry on client-side honeypots which features shelia: article
  • The Mitre honeyclient site has some text on shelia
  • Shelia features on the honeyblog (March 2007) blog

    Streamline

  • OSNews mentions the Special Issue of OSR on Research and Development in the Linux Kernel. At least some readers like Streamline's pipesfs. The issue also made slashdot

    Various Press

    The press release in january 2005 was also mentioned in (all more or less the same as the original ANP release):

  • Dagblad van het Noorden
  • Dagblad De Limburger
  • Noordhollands Dagblad
  • Leeuwarder Courant
  • Amersfoortse Courant - Internet
  • ANP nieuws; aangeboden door NRC
  • I was told the news was broadcast on teletext, but I missed it

    If anyone, finds any other files/links, please send them to me, so I can add them above. I would be particularly interested in the radio show on 3FM and Radio1 as I havenīt heard them myself.

    Other projects

  • Computable: Wifi evolueert in Leiden (Dutch, October, 2003, An artikel about some network management work we did with Wireless Leiden).