Re: Automatic Exploitation Paper Peer Review

[Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo () alchemistowl org>]

On 11 Dec 2010, at 16:47 , Jon Solworth wrote:
>       Are you comparing two classes of academics, those working
> or hard problems and those working on today's problems?

Not really, I'm comparing those working on hard problems and those working on sufficiently small subsets that they 
become almost irrelevant.

>       If so, I'm not sure that they are working on different problems,
> it seems to me that they are looking at different ways of attacking
> the same tough problem.  But the second class has so many more
> constraints than the first class that it is very difficult to obtain full solutions.
> Thus, solutions are partial.

I am not sure I agree with that.  One of the saddest moments in my academic life was realising that the choice of PhD 
is dictated for the majority of non-brilliant students (of which, sadly, I was part) not by the advancement of science 
but by the fastest route to achieve a thesis which will pass muster.  You therefore look for problems which are 
obscure, hidden somewhere and with next to no chance of having any importance except to close a border case.  The 
impression I have is: lots of border cases in academia when it comes to security.

Is there a lack of smart researchers willing to tackle security in universities or are they all being poached by 
industry and money?

>       Now the question is whether these partial solutions extend to
> useful solutions?  Maybe.  But the history in security is not good.

No, it is not.

>       Because the constraints are reduced (and because complexity
> matters so much in security), it seems to me that the first class has
> a much better chance of solving these problems than the second.

Yes, and no.  Are we sure the complexity we see is not comparable to the Ptolemaic model? Are we trying to keep saving 
a model which is flawed from day one but since it still produces papers (and funding) in both academia and industry 
then nobody really has an interest in throwing it away (including myself no doubt)?

Arrigo

_______________________________________________
Dailydave mailing list
Dailydave () lists immunityinc com
https://lists.immunityinc.com/mailman/listinfo/dailydave