Botnets, armies of enslaved computers that have been infected with carefully crafted worms or viruses, are responsible for more than 80 percent of the over 100 billion spam messages e-mailed daily. Antivirus programs are often ineffective against them, because the software typically works by scanning a computer for signatures of known viruses – and the viruses that turn computers into bots are often too new for characteristic patterns to have been identified.

Dr. Christopher Kruegel, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will present research and practical applications from the UCSB Computer Security Group showing how this new breed of cybersecurity threats are being countered and destroyed. These threats represent and entirely new level of cybersecurity challenges for today’s Internet.

Dr. Kruegel will demonstrate the approach of taking the “last line of defense” to overcome the shortcomings of current anti-virus software in warding off malware and other cyber-threats. Through case studies and technical descriptions of this new approach, he will also highlight the ramifications of ever-increasing cybersecurity threats in a variety of areas beyond personal use of the Internet, such as healthcare information systems, communications for national defense, and control systems on the electric grid and elsewhere.

• When:
  Thursday, December 2
• Details:
  Program at http://ewh.ieee.org/r6/central_coast/
• Price:
  No charge to IEEE members
• Contact:
  IEEECentralCoast@gmail.com
• Sign-up:
  https://www.123signup.com/event?id=vttfx