About the author
It's hard to believe I have been tinkering with computers for 20 years, starting with an Apple IIe and progressing through the PC revolution, the early years of the World Wide Web, and the dotcom boom/bust, and now full circle back to the return of Apple Computer. During that time I was always more interested in how the machines worked and how to make them function differently than I was in the practical tasks that they performed. That fascination lead me right into security, because in the computer realm security is all about how can the system be made to behave maliciously different than it was intended to and how can those unintended effects be prevented. I got into practical security early while navigating the dangerous back-channels of IRC (interestingly IRC is getting a lot more publicity these days because of Zombie Armies). Those were the days of the infamous "out-of-band" TCP data that would crash the fragile Windows TCP/IP stack, so I made it a point to stay up to date on security patches (some times required to be downloaded from a good old BBS), and install a first-generation Windows firewall. In university I ran the computer lab and spent a lot of my time hardening our Solaris machines rather than doing my assigned studies. My career got started as a simple Summer job at ISP Bellsouth.net (where I was quickly promoted to lead technician), and continued on a whirlwind tour with stops at ISP Worldshare.net (where I was the team-lead on the very first support team), ASP and software provider CriticalPath, e-mail security vendor CipherTrust, messaging and file transfer security company Tumbleweed Communications, and currently at messaging security provider Proofpoint, Inc. In my spare time I harden my own network, give talks on e-mail security, attend security conferences, and add content to this website. I'm a member of the following organzations: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Infragard, and San Francisco OpenBSD Users Group You may contact me with relevant questions or comments at:
. If you would like to have me speak to your group please send me an e-mail.
A Note About the Content of this Site
I (Brian Keefer) authored all the content on this site, and I retain full copyright to it. People are welcome to browse the site, read all the linked pages, and download them for off-line viewing if they wish. I have put a lot of work into creating this site, so if you reuse the content in any way (other than for your own, personal viewing) I'm requiring written permission and acknowledgement of the source. If you would like to reuse any of this information in papers, presentations, literature, etc please e-mail me at the address I provided above.
I've been known to read a lot of books...
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magazines
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This site © copyright 2003-2007 Brian Keefer. Unauthorized republication is forbidden.