Gene Spafford

Spafford attended the State University of New York at Brockport, graduating with a double major in mathematics and computer science in three years. He then attended the School of Information and Computer Sciences (now the College of Computing) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Master of Science (M.S.) in 1981, and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in 1986, for his design and implementation of the kernel of the original Clouds distributed operating system.[1]

During the formative years of the Internet, Spafford made significant contributions to establishing semi-formal processes to organize and manage Usenet, then the primary channel of communication between users, and to defining the standards of behavior governing its use.[2][3] Spafford initiated the Phage List as a response to the Morris Worm, one of the earliest computer worms.[4][5]

Spafford has served on the faculty at Purdue University in Indiana since 1987, and is a full professor of computer science. He is executive director emeritus of Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), and founded its predecessor, the COAST Laboratory. He has stated that his research interests have focused on "the prevention, detection, and remediation of information system failures and misuse, with an emphasis on applied information security. This has included research in fault tolerance, software testing and debugging, intrusion detection, software forensics, and security policies."

Spafford wrote or co-authored four books on computer and computer security, including Practical Unix and Internet Security for O'Reilly Media, and over 150 research papers, chapters, and monographs. In 1996, he received the Award of Distinguished Technical Communication from the Society for Technical Communication for Practical Unix and Internet Security.

As a PhD advisor, Spafford supervised development of the Open Source Tripwire tool coded by his student Gene Kim. Spafford was the chief external technical advisor to the company Tripwire during their first few years. He was also graduate advisor to Dan Farmer who coded the freeware Computer Oracle and Password System (COPS) tool.

In 2009, Spafford discussed on C-SPAN an article in The New York Times that looked at how the Internet had been a conduit for many types of cybercrime.[6][7]

Recent work from Spafford has shown how to deceive adversaries and thus make computing systems more secure,[8] drawing on his multi-disciplinary expertise in information security and psychology.[9]

Spafford is on the board of directors of the Computing Research Association and is the former chairperson of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) US Public Policy Committee.[10] He was a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee from 2003 to 2005[11] and an advisor to the National Science Foundation (NSF). Spaf is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020).