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Vint Cerf on Net Security, Hacking, and Acting

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the internet-hams dept.

ancientribe writes "Father of the Internet Vint Cerf talks candidly in an article on Dark Reading about his being a Googler, and the biggest problems with Internet security and what he sees as the most promising solutions. He says that he's only done a little casual hacking, and that the term 'hacker' no longer comes with the honor it once did. Cerf also reveals in this personal look at the Internet icon that his real dream was to be an actor."

11 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Music by Metasquares · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From TFA:

    "I used to play the cello -- and regret that I gave it up so entirely in pursuit of science and math"
    I would say this is good advice for others doing intense study in science and math: don't give up everything else that you love or you will regret it for the rest of your life, even if you do become famous in your field.
    1. Re:Music by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is good advice indeed.

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  2. DARPA Trilogy? by skoaldipper · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actor who would play Cerf in a movie: "Well, how about that guy in 'Matrix' who played 'the Architect?'"

    DARPA Revolutions

    The Architect - Hello, Al.
    Al - Who are you?
    Architect - I created the Internet.
    Al - Bullshit.
    The Architect - Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.
    Al - If I were you, I would hope that we don't meet again.
    The Architect - We won't.
    --
    I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
  3. Re:The Architect by MythMoth · · Score: 2, Informative

    And here's someone's blog entry making the point better than I did.

    --
    --- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
  4. He did do a brief acting stint by koreth · · Score: 4, Informative
    I remember seeing him in a bit part on "Earth: Final Conflict" as a presidential science advisor or somesuch.

    Ah, yes, he has an IMDB page detailing his appearances. So it looks like he got to live at least a tiny bit of that particular dream. Good for him!

  5. Does not mention M$ by name, what a let down. by twitter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The security quote:

    Cerf says the biggest threats are the proliferation of spam, botnets, malware, and denial-of-service attacks. "Much work is needed to increase the security of the Internet and its connected computers," he says, "and to make the environment more reliable for everyone."

    "And use of IPSec would foil some higher-level protocol attacks, and digital signing of IP address assignment records could reduce some routing/spoofing risks," he says. OSes need to be more airtight, too, and two-factor authentication should be more the norm than plain old passwords, he says.

    But Cerf knows securing his baby won't be easy. "Security is a mesh of actions and features and mechanisms," he says. "No one thing makes you secure."

    It's too bad the reporter injected so much of their own opinion into the article. I'd much rather have heard Cert's own words than interpretations. The result is that it looks like the reporter did not ask the right questions at the time to get clear answers.

    Reading and rereading the above, it looks like he's thinking of ways to make the network work without having to trust the clients attached. That would be a neat trick.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

    1. Re:Does not mention M$ by name, what a let down. by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Funny

      it looks like he's thinking of ways to make the network work without having to trust the clients attached. That would be a neat trick.

      We could call it an internet.

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  6. Re:Father of the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Father of the Internet Vint Cerf WHAT not Al Gore!?
    No... they're both the father of the internet, they just can't get legally married yet.
  7. Re:Father of the internet by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Father of the Internet Vint Cerf WHAT not Al Gore!?

          I demand DNS testing!!!

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  8. Those were the days... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Interesting
    He's probably one of the only people at Google who can remember the Arpanet or what the Internet was like before the Web.

    Hell, *I* remember ARPAnet and the Internet before the Web! BSD 4.2/3 on a VAX 785, Sun 3 and diskless clients, routing email using "host!host!user", ASCII terminals, Xerox LISP workstations and the days before EMACS... [ That last one can be used as either the beginning or end of a camp-fire horror story :-) ]

    I'm getting old.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  9. It soured me too by Wee · · Score: 2, Informative
    I was soured on the rest of it as well, so much so that I wrote them an email.

    The author was (I think) trying to set up Google as young company, with Vint as a senior benefactor, juxtaposing his age with the myth of everyone here being 24 years old. Or something. But I can name 5 people here off the top of my head (myself included) whose experience predates the web, or who worked with/on/over ARPAnet in some way. If I stand up and look around, I'll spot no less than 8 people with grey hair. Not everyone is fresh out of college.

    I was just very puzzled as to why they chose that sentence to start off the article. But the rest of the piece turned out to be mostly fluff, so I saw it for what it was in the end.

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.