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AusCERT 2010 kicks off: photos

The nation's security elite have travelled to the Gold Coast to pick each other's brains on how best to keep users and companies safe from IT bugs. Enjoy the photos of last night's drinks and this morning's speakers.
By Munir Kotadia, Contributor
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1 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

AusCERT is being held at the RACV Royal Pines Resort.

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2 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Stands received attention on Sunday night as delegates enjoyed food and drink.

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3 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram realises he's being caught on camera.

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4 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

An IBM stand gamer gets a high score.

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5 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

The Fortinet stand, with definitely the best beer.

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6 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Microsoft's Surface draws a crowd.

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7 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Paul Ducklin, Sophos head of technology, Asia Pacific

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8 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Shooting hoops with Alphawest.

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9 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

The booth babes are back at AusCERT 2010. This is the Kaspersky stand — awaiting the arrival of the company's founder, Eugene Kaspersky.

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10 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

A mystery guest arrives in style.

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11 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram once again explains the work of the Computer Emergency Response Team and stresses that AusCERT is far more than just an annual conference. He urges delegates to talk to each other, network and share ideas to help improve the overall level of security.

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12 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Whitfield Diffie, also known as "Whit" and one of the founders of public key cryptography, presents the opening keynote at AusCERT 2010, titled, "An historical look at cloud computing".

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13 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Whit also warned that internet users are "putting a tremendous amount of faith" in the Google founder's public intention to "not be evil" because they can see what everyone is looking for and what they're interested in.

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14 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Whit said the cloud as we know it could substantially improve the average level of security of ordinary users who don't need to (or want to) pay attention.

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15 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNET
(Credit: Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia)

The second keynote on day one was presented by Bob Maley, the founder of Strategic CISO. Maley was fired from his job as the CISO for the State of Pennsylvania after he publicly disclosed the state Department of Transportation's security woes.

Maley said companies have a responsibility to their stock holders — unlike governments, which he said should be held responsible to the citizens but are not.

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16 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Dr Crispin Cowen, who for many years was a vocal Linux security guru and Microsoft critic, recently started working for the Redmond-based software giant. His talk on the first day of AusCERT 2010 was titled "Stranger in a strange land: Reflections of a Linux guy in Microsoft Windows".

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17 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Crispin said he went to Microsoft with a heap of ideas on how the company should change its Windows OS to make it more secure, and although the company did listen to all his ideas and even tested them, none of them worked because of the basic architecture of Windows and the need for backward capability. He said many applications actually depend on legacy Windows bugs in order to function.

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18 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

Crispin's very amusing presentation also pointed out the many flaws in Windows, such as the ability for one desktop application to inject a thread into another application and run arbitrary code in that application's address space.

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19 of 19 Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia

He also pointed out some basic flaws in Linux when running as a desktop operating system.

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