Speakin' at Shmoocon

Well, it's official now. From Shmoocon.org:

A Plenary Session on the Security and Social Impact of the One Laptop Per Child program

The Children's Machine, also known as the XO-1 and previously as the $100 Laptop, is a low-cost, power-efficient and durable machine developed by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab at the One Laptop per Child non-profit organization (OLPC). The laptop's purpose is to redefine learning for children in developing countries, particularly those living in the most remote areas and in the poorest of countries, by providing them with access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops contain flash memory instead of hard drives and use a custom operating system based on Fedora Core Linux, which includes a new security architecture called Bitfrost. They are built to utilize wireless mesh networking, a form of mobile ad-hoc networking, to allow machines to communicate without requiring configuration by the user. The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on the basis of one laptop per child.

What may be the consequences of such a massive distribution of computers to children in developing nations? A much larger Internet population in a few short years appears to be a certainty. Will tens or hundreds of millions of computers running Linux drastically alter the computer security landscape? What is the potential for the laptops to be abused by criminals or closed and oppressive governments? And how will the Internet affect millions of children who find themselves with access to a world decades ahead of their own culture?

Bio: Sean Coyne

Beginning his career as the only Business School member of Penn State's NSA Center for Information Assurance Excellence, Sean is now is a sought after consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton specializing in Information Security for government clients. Sean's technical know-how coupled with a big picture view has led him to help found the Vulnerable Minds think tank, studying the impact of information security on society.

Bio: Ivan Krstic

LiveJournal doesn't have an angry mood anymore, as Ivan Krstić used it all up. Ivan has been angry on all seven continents.

Bio: Jason Scott

Jason Scott runs TEXTFILES.COM, an online collection of the last 30 years of Bulletin Board System-era history, files and artifacts. He is also the director of "BBS: The Documentary" (www.bbsdocumentary.com), a 3-DVD, 8-episode documentary about the BBS, a project 4 years in the making. He has begun production on GET LAMP (www.getlamp.com), a documentary on text adventures. He speaks on topics of computer history and social commentary at various conferences, including Shmoocon 2006, where he presented a history of hacker conferences. Jason currently lives in Massachusetts, and is secretly in love with Bruce Potter.

Bio: Scott Roberts

An up and coming member of the DC InfoSec community. Scott began his interest in Information Security trying to get access to the Internet in 9th grade computer classes and it has lead him to a position as a Global Security Analyst at Symantec Managed Security Services. Along with Vulnerable Minds, a think tank he helped found, Scott is also involved in various projects involving Snort, large scale architectures, and teaching information assurance.

I'm not gonna lie, Sean and I are stoaked. This is really shaping up to be a great talk. Jason Scott has done some really great talks before from Shmoocon, Defcon, and others. Not to mention any guy making a profession of love to Bruce Potter can't be bad at all, just amusingly crazy. He's teaming up with Sean to take a look at the sociological, economical, other -ical type things that will come up with the OLPC.

Ivan Krstic, as I have mentioned before, is an unbelievably smart gentleman, not that it's a surprise, I mean he did design Bitfrost (which will be a major topic of our panel). As much as I'm looking forward to speaking with him I'm equally excited to just get the chance to pick his brain as one of the most out of the box people in computer security.

Sean... well I see him most days, but he does have a lot of great angles on this quite interesting issue. It'll be great to hear what he comes prepared with, and even better to hear what he does with the various questions that I'm sure will be thrown his way.

As for my piece I'm planning on tag teaming the technical end of things with Ivan, looking at the implications of such technology on the security space. There is so much to cover around this, both for the kids with the laptops, the world at large, and what lessons can be learned.

It should be a great panel and I'm honored to be with such an esteemed group. So track us down at Shmoocon. I'll be doing another post on Shmoocon later this week but regardless track me down to say hi. I'll be the loud guy with the short hair and the speakers pass. If you're lucky you may even get one of the new Vulnerable Minds business cards (Thanks again Timoni! The new logos look great!).