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Summercon 2004 - Speakers

Tom Grasso
Tom Grasso began working with computers professionally in 1993 as a LAN administrator and by 1995 was responsible for maintaining an 800-user wide area network for a subsidiary of Westinghouse. In 1998 Mr. Grasso received an appointment to the position of Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). After attending new agents training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, he was transferred to the FBI's Chicago Field Office where he was assigned to the Regional Computer Crime Squad. In the fall of 2000, he was transferred to the FBI's Pittsburgh Field Office and assigned to the High Technology Crimes Task Force. Mr. Grasso is also the FBI Liaison to the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC) at Carnegie Mellon University. At present, he is working to develop the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), a joint partnership between law enforcement, academia and industry.

Laszlo Hars
Laszlo Hars received his PhD in computer science from the ELTE University, where John von Neumann, Paul Erd_s and other word famous mathematicians started their carrier. He lectured there and at other universities for 15 years, then worked in the telecommunication industry designing measurement instruments like spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes and signal generators. For the last 6 years he has been working in the field of information security: digital watermarking, tamper resistant SW, digital rights management, random number generation and test and optimizations of cryptographic algorithms and HW. He has over 60 patent applications, 18 of them in random number generation and tests. Some recent publications:

  • Frequency Response Compensation with DSP, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, (July 2003) pp. 91-95.
  • with M. Epstein, R. Krasinski, M. Rosner, H. Zheng: Design and Implementation of a True Random Number Generator Based on Digital Circuit Artifacts, Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems CHES 2003, Cologne, Germany (2003)
  • Fast Truncated Multiplication and its Applications in Cryptography, submitted to the Journal of Cryptology, 2003
  • Long Modular Multiplication for Cryptographic Applications, to be presented in the Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES), Boston 2004

kitizen sane
kitizen sane has only recently adopted an alias, so that he can make more truthful statements with less fear of systemic reciprocity. he was born with too much privelege in fairfield county, CT, but has been risking it ever since. before he was lured away by more $ and more freedom, kit was tutored by the only openly anarchist professor at carnegie mellon university. after breif stints playing feedback music, deconstructing automobiles, and trying to scam the art world, he has now turned his attention to electronic civil disobedience and planning for the upcoming counter-revolution. kitizen sane is a funny pseudonym because it is a spoonerism for "citizen kane" and also sounds like "kid is insane" ha ha ha.

Mark J. Nernberg
Born: Pittsburgh, PA, 1970

Mark is a former hacker who has turned to providing security solutions to businesses. Arrested at age 14 for hacking, he was acquitted, and continued his education after high school by studying Philosophy and Music Composition at NYU. After receiving his BA, Mark operated a 28 restaurant consortium in Ocean City, NJ, while pursuing his Ph.D. in Discrete Mathematics, also at NYU. He is well-respected in the fields of Discrete Mathematics and Aesthetics for his work on a unified theory of Aesthetics as it applies to "Art."

After returning to Pittsburgh in 2000, Mark began pursuing computer networking and security projects locally, specializing in work for law firms. His understanding of technology and his ability to explain difficult concepts also permitted him to find plenty of work as an expert witness in cases involving technology.

His current focus has been on workplace security and practical means of providing the necessary elements. As an expert with the FreeBSD and Darwin operating systems, he has also built open-source solutions to spam and workplace collaboration while maintaining high levels of security. Importantly, he says that "Security starts and ends with the people -- the technology has nothing to do with it!"

Mark is a FreeBSD committer, and a contributor to many open-source projects.

Samuel D. Norris
Samuel Norris has more than 27 years in the Information Technology industry, most of it in some security capacity. He is the founder and president of The Center for Digital Forensic Research, Inc., a local company focused on improving the quality of digital forensic tools and techniques. From 1998 until 2004, he taught technical subjects at the post-secondary level, focusing on hardware, legacy operating systems and, more recently, computer forensics. Prior to that he was the MIS Director and Chief of Telecommunications Security for a CLEC. In this second capacity, he conducted numerous investigations, both internal and external. During this same period, he worked with a privaTE Investigator, specializing in computer-related investigations. In 1988 � 1989, he was lead security analyst for a DOD contractor, working on security projects for the Department of the Navy.

redpantz
Redpantz is a student at the University of Pittsburgh and DBA for Pittsburgh-based company.

Paul Scragg
Paul Scragg is an Oracle consultant specializing in the web deployment of Oracle Applications. Paul has many years of development experience at the Oracle European Development Center and has contributed to Oracle Repository and Oracle Designer products. Previous presentations have included Generating Applications for WAN at Oracle Open World.

Chris Tracy
Check out his website for a full bio.

Mark Trumpbour
Mark Trumpbour began his interest in computer security growing up in a hacker commune on the Jersey Shore in the early Eighties. His first real computer was an Atari 800 that he and his many brothers used to explore the frontiers of cyberspace. Not that they called it cyberspace back then.

Ever the digital pioneer, Mark was suspended from his high school for connecting a computer lab to the Internet-at a time when the World Wide Web did not exist and FTP was considered a wonder of the modern world. To this day he ignores requests from the high school alumni association.

Mark has worked in all aspects of the computer field. He got his start in technical writing, moved to software quality assurance, and went on to become a fearsome Unix system administrator. When everybody was founding ISPs, Mark did too. It was there that he found out that script-kiddies were taking over, tarnishing the once-proud traditions of the hacker community. Unless somebody did something, the golden age of hacking would be over. His association with SummerCon began as an attempt to rekindle the creative spirit of hacking, and to demonstrate that hacking can be a socially responsible activity.

Mark works in New York City for a consulting firm that specializes in telecommunications management and software development. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two greyhounds.