Free Lecture: The Psychology of Computer Insecurity

This Thursday Dr Peter Gutmann, an honorary research associate of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, will give a free public lecture titled: The Psychology of Computer Insecurity. His research is on the design and analysis of cryptographic security architectures and security usability. He helped write the popular PGP encryption package and has authored a number of papers and RFCs on security and encryption. He is the author of the open source cryptlib security toolkit "Cryptographic Security Architecture: Design and Verification" (Springer, 2003), and also has an upcoming book "Engineering Security". In his spare time he pokes holes in whatever security systems and mechanisms catch his attention and grumbles about the lack of consideration of human factors in designing security systems.

Synopsis: A fairly standard response with computer security failures is to blame the user. The real culprit, though, is the way in which the human mind works. Millennia of evolutionary conditioning and the environment in which users operate cause them to act, and react, in predictable ways to given stimuli and situations. This talk looks at the (often surprising) ways in which the human mind deals with computer security issues, and why apparent “bugs in the wetware” are something that not only cannot be patched but are often critical to our functioning as humans.

When: 6pm for free refreshments for a 6.30pm start, Thursday 22nd May, 2014
Where: Owen G Glenn Building, Room OGGB3/260-092 University of Auckland
Note that there is public parking in the basement of the Owen G Glenn Building at 12 Grafton Road.