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Rossfest
We all went to Rossfest last week. Ross Anderson, renowned professor of security engineering at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, died suddenly and much too young last March. His death came as a shock. Many people came to Rossfest with recollections of his life and his contributions to cryptography and cybersecurity. The atmosphere was jovial. Despite a background of depressing geopolitics there was no note of the dismal or morose, rather a defiant camaraderie and sense of hope.
For those unfamiliar with Prof. Anderson's work, he is of course the author of "Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems", a seminal textbook that provides comprehensive insights into designing secure systems. This work has become a cornerstone in the education of security professionals worldwide. I knew Ross as one of his many proofreaders of the third edition.
Security Engineering was one of the core textbooks for our students on their MSc in Cybersecurity Engineering. It is so readable that some students feasted on all of the more than 1000 pages, which took quite some time. It is truly a bible of cybersecurity as it contains everything in one place and how it all connects.
In collaboration with colleagues, Anderson conducted influential research on information hiding techniques. His survey on steganography, Information Hiding: A Survey, co-authored with F.A.P. Petitcolas and M.G. Kuhn, offers an in-depth analysis of methods used to conceal information within other data.
Anderson co-developed the Serpent encryption algorithm, which was a finalist in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) competition. Serpent is renowned for its high security margin and was designed to be both secure and efficient.