The Globetrotting Geek

Papers and Pipers

June 20, 2016

The week of February 14 was one of the hardest weeks I’ve had. It was both physically and mentally exhausting with a good dose of stress. Apparently this happens in academia but I sure hope to avoid it as much as possible. That week contained three events of significance. An international flight to Barbados, the Glee Club Spring Show, and the USENIX security deadline. Of these, by far the most important was the deadline.

USENIX security is the top publishing venue in my field (Applied Cryptography and Security) and my group had three papers to submit. Two of the three were very high profile and collaborative, and the one remaining a product of our group alone. They were also not quite ready to be published. The one which was eventually accepted “DROWN: Breaking TLS using SSLv2” describes a method by which a malicious person could read internet communications that were supposedly encrypted, numbering up to 29% of all HTTPS connections. excitingly enough our work was even reported in the mainstream media, but this didn’t alleviate the amount of work needed to get it ready for publication.

Another one of the publications with which I was involved was “A Systematic Analysis of the Juniper Dual EC Incident” that examines how attempts to backdoor the security capabilities of a class of corporate network devices backfired and allowed a malicious entity to commandeer it for themselves. Again our research was reported in the media much to my excitement. Both papers had policy implications as decisions made for policy reasons impacted the development of the above technologies and lead both directly and indirectly to the vulnerabilities. My lab and I consider this to be a fruitful research direction and hope to publish more papers in related areas.

These two and the other paper ensured my days started early, and even without rehearsals, would have ended late. I was in the lab every day by 9.30AM, and left at around 6.30PM for rehearsal. Rehearsals were enjoyable but I couldn’t fully commit myself knowing there was work to be done. I made sure I was present for the bare minimum needed to perform and left most nights at 10PM to get back to the lab to stay there until 3 or 4AM when Nadia, Luke, Josh Fried (a new undergraduate lab-mate) and I physically couldn’t stay productive. While the work environment was fun with Phillip Glass or Europop in the background, it was tough to focus and be productive for so many hours a day. Definitely not the optimal way for me to produce high quality work consistently.

The show later in the week was immensely enjoyable, despite the publication pressure. I featured as one of three depressed clowns in a failing circus, and had a few starring moments. The Penn Pipers (the Glee Club barbershop and do-wop barbershop subset) also had two numbers in the show and I had a few more moments there. Overall, the best part of the show was the musicality that our new director Joshua Glassman brought to our ensemble. This being our first spring show with him presented many challenges, and his busy schedule as a freelance musician all put pressures on everyone, but gladly, it all came together.

Finally, there was my flight to Barbados for a conference, scheduled to depart 6AM Sunday morning from JFK airport, NYC. Unfortunately, the final performance of the Glee Club show was scheduled for less than 12 hours prior, and so immediately following the closing of the curtains, I grabbed by bag, sprinted to a cab and caught the train to NYC…

Dvořák Symphony No. 9

June 16, 2016

The journey to Croatia was somewhat more eventful than I’d have hoped. First a train to Newark, then a flight to Toronto. While there I spent my layover in the lounge and attempted to make myself some soup, only spilling the boiling water over my hands and shattering a bowl. Not an ideal start. As I was cleaning up, my backpack split along the seams, spilling my clothes and books onto the floor. After I cleaned up from that I relaxed on an Air Canada flight to Heathrow, albeit with a throbbing sensation in my left hand. My flight was unfortunately a little delayed and that left me with a forty-five minute sprint to transfer in Heathrow and dash through the terminals to catch my flight to Split, Croatia, just as the gate was closing.

When I landed in Croatia, a bus was waiting for me and a few other cryptographers to go Šibenik, a small resort town on the coast where I would be partaking in a cryptography summer school. On the bus I met a few students from Royal Holloway, University of London, Ben, Lydia and Torben who were all lovely. Once there I almost collapsed in exhaustion, barely managing to say hi to Luke before crashing for a few hours.

The next day was fairly unremarkable, with some introductory talks given, and more sneaking out on my part to try and recover from minor illness and some jetlag. It was day two of the program that really shined. Luke introduced me to Henry, a very talented and outspoken student of djb and Tanja Lange’s. He further introduced us to a few friends of his including Isis, another person I enjoyed spending time with alongside the brits.  djb (Dan Berstein) and Tanja are collaborators of ours who do a lot of excellent work in cryptography and thus it was also quite exciting to meet the two of them. Tanja in particular had been delivering kosher, vegan, gummy candies to the lab via Nadia and thus needed much thanks for it.

A few things were really notable at the conference. One was different social circles that people mixed in. Some people definitely aligned themselves more with cypherpunk culture while others maintained more academic detachment. There were plenty of people with radical political views, mostly close to the anarchical and left leaning sides of the spectrum, and it was an interesting chance to hear their views. On a more academic side, the european’s were much more heavily focused on symmetric encryption (where you meet ahead of time to exchange a password) as opposed to our work which focused more on asymmetric (where you do some fancy maths to share something privately).

My last day in Croatia was spent on a tour of Kornati national park, composed of a series of rocky islands that we reached over the course of a three hour boat ride. It was a really nice chance to unwind and spend more time getting to know colleagues in a social situation. I read on the beach, dipped in the water, ate ice cream and climbed to the top of a hill along with friends and lab-mates. Altogether a great day.

 

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At 2.50AM I was off on my way home. This trip wasn’t entirely pleasant either. I arrived hours too early at Split airport, where I called Celeste (more on her at a later point) to chat for thirty minutes while I attempted to stay awake for check-in. A short flight later I was at Zagreb airport with six hours to kill; no lounge, no seating and no check in. A five hour flight stopped in an unnamed country, another thirteen hours to Melbourne, twenty-six minutes from the tarmac through customs and border control and I was on a mad dash home before it got dark on Friday night. I only just made it.

In Which I Have A Really Wonderful Evening

December 4, 2014

I slept in late the next day after working hard the previous night. When I woke up I tackled another chapter of my algorithms textbook but was soon fast asleep again. Around lunchtime I woke up, had a bite to eat, and then started helping Sarah prepare for the evening’s meal. My primary task was to plate up dessert. I actually had quite an enjoyable time doing so and managed to set out the food in a most acceptable manner. Unfortunately I neglected to take pictures, but you can imagine cookies of different colours fanned out on a multi-layered platter. A little later in the afternoon Moe and Ariella arrived back from a black Friday shopping trip. Ariella had been successful in the purchase of a cut price pair of headphone, but the two of them were otherwise unencumbered.

After another hour or so of prep, it was time to get ready, so I showered and cleaned up my mess a little. Just before I had time to get into nicer clothes, the doorbell rang. Ben and Lily Gamse, Ariella’s step-cousins had arrived. I was soon introduced to them by Dani, and instantly struck it off with the two of them. Lily immediately came off as very jovial and on the bouncier side of things, very talkative and keen to meet people. Her brother Ben was slightly more reserved and a little older, but still an absolute pleasure to talk to. Seeing the two of them together and being so close made me miss my brothers Adi and Raph a lot, and caused me to look forward to a few weeks time when I would be home with them again for a few weeks. Shabbat came in soon, along with a slew of other guests, notably another young adult cousin Sarah, who was studying political science up in Vermont and Bob’s son Connor who I didn’t have the chance to get to know so well.

Dinner was really fantastic. Delicious food. Probably amongst the top two meals I had eaten since leaving home. Not only that, but having a crowd of friendly twenty-somethings up my end of the table meant I had a really great time talking to them. ‘King’ David, Ariella’s brother was in a great mood too, and all in all it seemed like we were having a better time than most of the adults. After a few hours, dinner died down a little and a few of us when over to the couches to chat for a while. Once most of the guests had left, Lily and Ben (who were staying the night), and Dani, decided to go to a bar to meet with a friend of hers. Predictably Moe, Ariella and I stayed home. For the next hour and a half, I tried to read more of my textbook, actually getting through a chunk.

At around midnight, Dani, Ben and Lily returned home. Every came downstairs again for a snack and noticed Sarah asleep next to Felafel and Peppers, their two Beagles. Apparently the temptation of a nap with the beloved dogs was a little too much! Similarly, Bob was asleep on a nearby couch. After most everyone headed to bed, Lily and I stayed up to chat for another hour and a bit, before both of us finally retired. I was enthused to have had such a wonderful evening and met so many people. I also really appreciated I had somewhere to go for thanksgiving with people who treated me as part of the family.