Last year, the Financial Cryptography '97 (FC97) Workshop was the world's first intensive financial cryptography workshop for senior managers and IS professionals. This year, the Financial Cryptography '98 (FC98) Workshop will be held Monday through Friday, March 2-6, 1998, at the Inter-Island Hotel on the Carribbean island of Anguilla.
This workshop will follow the peer-reviewed financial cryptography conference and commercial exhibition, Financial Cryptography 1998 (FC98), which will be held the preceding week, February 23-27, 1998.
The goals of the combined workshop, conference and exhibition are:
Ian Goldberg, the Workshop chair, has picked an outstanding team of instructors in financial cryptography and internet financial system security to teach the courses in this workshop. The Workshop will consist of 40 hours of intensive instruction and lab time over 5 days. Students will have access to Internet-connected workstations.
The Workshop is intended for senior IS managers and technical professionals who want to get completely up to speed on the design, development, and implementation of financial cryptography systems, the core technology of internet commerce. After the workshop, senior managers will have a hands-on understanding the strengths and liabilities of currently available financial cryptography and internet transaction security software and hardware, and thus be able to make better asset allocation decisions in this area of explosive technology growth. Senior technical professionals with strong IS experience will be able to implement those technologies and to pass on what they've learned to their clients and colleagues when they return home.
The Workshop will be held in a casual but intensive atmosphere at the very cutting edge of financial technology on the internet. Someone has likened the experience to a financial cryptography bootcamp. At the end, Workshop attendees should be utterly conversant in cryptography as it applies to finance. Workshop participants will not only know what everyone else is doing now in internet commerce, but, more important, because they understand the implications of strong financial cryptography on ubiquitous public networks, they will be able to know what to do *next*.
Ian Goldberg is a Ph.D. student in security and cryptography at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the first winner of RSA Data Security Inc.'s Secret-Key Challenge, breaking a 40-bit cipher in just 3.5 hours. In late 1995, he discovered what became a much-publicized flaw in Netscape's implementation of SSL. He is a recognized expert in electronic payment systems, and in DigiCash's ecash digital bearer certificate protocol in particular. He has produced several ecash clients for Unix and Windows, as well as an ecash module for the Stronghold web server, which has extended the existing ecash system for better security, privacy, and ease-of-use.
Gary Howland has spent the last four years with several companies that are primarily working with secure electronic commerce (including Digicash), where he has been involved with the design and development of secure payment protocols, and the application of these protocols to such tasks as electronic cash, bond trading, loyalty systems, and online gambling. He is also responsible for the development of the a freely available cryptographic library for java and perl.
John Kelsey is an experienced cryptographer, cryptanalyst, and programmer who has designed several algorithms and protocols. He pioneered research on secure random number generators, differential related-key cryptanalysis on block ciphers, and the chosen-protocol attack against cryptographic protocols. His research has been presented at several international conferences, and he has broken many proposed commercial cryptographic algorithm, protocol, and system designs. Kelsey has a degree in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Missouri Columbia.
Adam Shostack is Director of Technology for Netect, Inc, a Boston based startup building state of the art server security management applications. He has extensive background in designing, implementing and testing secure systems for clients in the medical, computer, and financial industries. His recent public work includes 'Apparent Weaknesses in the Security Dynamics Client Server Protocol,' 'Source Code Review Guidelines,' and comparisons of freely available cryptographic libraries.
The price of the workshop is $5,000 U.S. You can pay for your FC98 workshop ticket with Visa or MasterCard, with ecash, or with any of a number of other internet commerce payment protocols, at the regstriation site: <http://fc98.ai/>. Please register and make your plane and hotel reservations as soon as possible; workshop space is extremely limited.
The workshop price includes meals (but not lodging) at the InterIsland Hotel and lab space, plus the delivery and installation of hardware, network access, internet commerce software, all to a location like Anguilla. And, of course, 40 hours of instruction and structured lab activity. We have priced the workshop to be competitive with other comprehensive business and professional technology workshops of similar total session length.
In addition, the first ten FC98 workshop participants will receive a 50% reduction in their FC98 Conference and Exhibition fee, for a savings of $500 off the $1,000 conference admission.
You can register, and pay for, your workshop ticket at <http://fc98.ai/>.
Air travel to Anguilla is typically done through San Juan or St. Maarten/Martin. There are several non-stop flights a day from various US and European locations. Connection through to Anguilla can be made through American Eagle, or through LIAT, or in the case of St. Maarten, with a short ferry ride to Anguilla. See your travel agent for details.
Anguilla's runway is 3600 feet, with a displaced threshold of 600 feet, and can accomodate business jets. Obviously, you should talk to your aviation staff for details about your own aircraft's capabilities in this regard.
Anguilla import duties are not imposed on hardware or software which will leave the island again, so, as long as you take it with you when you leave, you won't pay import duties.
Please Note: Your FC98 Workshop fee only covers meals at the InterIsland Hotel. The InterIsland is actually a small guesthouse attached to a large conference facility, and so rooms there are in short supply. Fortunately, there are lots of small hotels and guesthouses nearby. For more information on these hotels, please see <http://fc98.ai/> for more information.
Other hotels on Anguilla range from spartan to luxurious, all within easy walking or driving distance of the Workshop at the InterIsland. More information about Anguillan hotels can be obtained from your travel agent, or at <http://fc98.ai/>.
To register and pay for your ticket to the FC98 conference itself, see: <http://fc98.ai/>
For information the selection of papers for the FC98 conference see: <http://www.cwi.nl/conferences/FC98>
If you're interested in Exhibition space, please contact Blanc Weber: <blancw@cnw.com>
If you're interested in sponsoring FC98, also contact Blanc Weber: <blancw@cnw.com>
Financial Cryptography '98 is held in cooperation with the International Association for Cryptologic Research. The conference proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.