You've heard of "buffer overflows" and maybe you've even been the cause of a few, but do you understand why they are bad? Maybe you're a ".NET developer" and you've never really thought about them. In this session we'll discuss how attackers discover buffer overflows, how they interrogate them, and, finally, how they are exploited. We'll walk through a live demonstration from fuzzing through obtaining a remote shell. You'll leave with a better understanding of how they work, and why you should ensure your code is protected from them.
In this session we'll discuss various wireless security techniques including common misconceptions and mis-configurations. We will demonstrate how easy it is to compromise even "secured" connections and what the implications are for you as an IT professional. Using free software and inexpensive hardware (~$30), we'll demonstrate a number of attacks and highlight the vulnerabilities that are present in the behavior of many wireless devices.
]]>PreCompiler, half-day
You can hardly pick up a computer industry trade magazine without there being an article about cloud computing. Lots of people are talking about the cloud and it is likely your boss is thinking about it (whether you know it or not). However, many questions arise as soon as you begin to talk about the cloud. How do you get there? Does it even make sense for you? Should you move all of your applications to the cloud? If not, which ones? How do you even begin? This half-day session will address these questions by giving a brief introduction to Windows Azure - the Platform as a Service offering from Microsoft - and then, using hands-on-labs and real-world samples, dig into a practical approach to migrating your applications. The session will end with a discussion on scalability and practices you should consider as you look to make your move.
]]>Often when you talk with someone about cloud computing, or when you are evaluating the cloud for your application, the advice you get is slanted to one platform or the other. Generally, this is due to the fact that most cloud experts know a lot about their particular platform of choice and aren't overly familiar with other offerings. Join us as we take a side-by-side walk through the features of both the Amazon and Microsoft offerings, and discuss various strengths and weaknesses of the platforms as well as their similarities and distinctives.
Much has been made in recent years about the multi-core explosion and the paradigm shift that developers are facing. In concert with this change, we are seeing a dramatic increase in the use of hybrid architectures (combination of traditional CPU and specialized processing boards). The most common combination of hybrid architecture is the CPU and GPU. In this session we'll provide an introduction to writing code to run on the GPU, we'll look at developer tools in Visual Studio to assist in this process, and we'll discuss various applications and approaches to consider when looking to leverage the GPU in your applications.
]]>Often when you talk with someone about cloud computing, or when you are evaluating the cloud for your application, the advice you get is slanted to one platform or the other. Generally, this is due to the fact that most cloud experts know a lot about their particular platform of choice and aren't overly familiar with other offerings. Join us as we take a side-by-side walk through the features of both the Amazon and Microsoft offerings, and discuss various strengths and weaknesses of the platforms as well as their similarities and distinctives.
Much has been made in recent years about the multi-core explosion and the paradigm shift that developers are facing. In concert with this change, we are seeing a dramatic increase in the use of hybrid architectures (combination of traditional CPU and specialized processing boards). The most common combination of hybrid architecture is the CPU and GPU. In this session we'll provide an introduction to writing code to run on the GPU, we'll look at developer tools in Visual Studio to assist in this process, and we'll discuss various applications and approaches to consider when looking to leverage the GPU in your applications.
]]>Cloud computing has gained significant popularity over the past few years and introduces a number of new and compelling capabilities as a computational platform. Beyond the well-established benefits such as the massive scalability of both compute on demand and storage on demand, cloud computing offers the ability to think differently about the problems we are trying to solve. Rather than facing constraints of fixed limitations of a target computational platform, we are able to develop codes and algorithms that can make intelligent use of the resources available. A particular code may begin to solve a problem on a modest set of hardware and then, as the incoming data set grows or solution evolves, issue calls to the underlying cloud infrastructure to allocate the appropriate increase in hardware. The software can then reconfigure its control structures to accommodate the newly acquired hardware and resume the task of solving the problem at hand.
This talk will discuss early progress in the application of the above techniques to a document clustering algorithm developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The original codes used to solve this problem utilize a memory resident non-binary tree, which causes the problem size to be limited by the amount of physical ram in the machine. The application of the cloud and the techniques described in this talk are allowing the algorithm to span multiple machines in a self-scaling, fault tolerant manner. This talk will provide initial results, lessons learned, future work, as well as a brief comments on utilizing various cloud vendors for the same code base.
Is the cloud real? Has the promise been realized? Join us as we dive into Amazon Web Services and walk through few real-world applications and discuss the issues faced, lessons learned, and ways you can avoid spilling your own blood while dancing on the bleeding edge of technology.
]]>Steve Ballmer has made it very clear that Microsoft is “all in” when it comes to the cloud and by now most have heard about Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform… but what does that mean for you? Whether you are an experienced .NET developer who is wondering what all this cloud stuff means for how you write code, or maybe you are a traditional *nix developer looking to understand how to integrate your existing code with the Microsoft version of the cloud, join us for an in-depth discussion on what Platform as a Service is, how Microsoft has implemented it, what scenarios it best addresses, and a collection of hands-on-labs to get you started.
AWS has been in the cloud computing space longer than most anyone, and they are the de facto standard when it comes to Infrastructure as a Service. While most developers are comfortable with the notion of virtual machines, reviewing the AWS offering can sometimes look like alphabet soup (EC2, S3, SNS, SDB, SQS). Join us to learn the power behind these acronyms and the tools that they can provide your next project. We’ll discuss the major components, some of the trade-offs between different implementation choices (i.e. boot from S3/boot from EBS, etc.) and provide you with the opportunity to work through some labs, deploy some code, and begin to experience the Amazon cloud for yourself. Examples are in .NET, but fundamental concepts apply to all platforms.
]]>(Excerpt) I work with a research group that generally focuses on text analysis/mining and Bayesian networks, but recently applied their strengths to the area of digital forensics. Specifically, they developed tools that are used by local police departments to aid in the prosecution of child pornographers. In one of our more recent meetings, we began discussing the role that cloud computing can play in this problem domain – how can it help, how can it hurt, what work needs to be done to address the resultant issues. While our collaboration effort is still in the nascent stages, we’ve established a handful of “knowns” that are worthy of broader conversation. As with most technologies, there is both a good and a dark side to the use of cloud computing. My goal in this article is not to paint the cloud with a black brush, but rather to highlight some unique issues and call to mind challenges that exist and must be dealt with. (more…)
]]>This talk was similar to some of the others I’ve given on the topic of using cloud computing for science but was specifically targeted to the audience at hand. This was one of four talks presented to a group of roughly 115 IT staff and researchers at the NASA’s Goddard Space Center.
]]>(Excerpt) Everyone (or so it seems) is talking about the cloud…
I have the privilege of being on the ground, working every day with these technologies and I’m seeing the actual transformation – the people who are beginning to embrace it, the scientists who are interested in using it, and some of the problems it has actually solved. Rather than hyping an idea or pushing a particular technology, I thought I’d take this opportunity to discuss some examples of the work we’ve been involved with and where we think it is headed. (more…)
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