[time-nuts] Introducing myself

Erich Heine sophacles at gmail.com
Sun Dec 2 20:06:02 UTC 2012


Hi everyone.

I just wanted to introduce myself to the list. My name is Erich Heine, I'm
a researcher at the University of Illinois. I am a programmer attached to a
couple of projects, but the one relevant here is called TCIP (Trustworthy
Cyber-Infrastructure for the Power Grid - url: tcipg.org).

Our group does computer security research relevant the the US power grid
infrastructure (and when relevant to all power delivery :) ). Recently
we've had researchers looking at GPS spoofing, and are beginning to examine
secure time synchronization more broadly. It's fascinating to discover just
how much havoc can be caused by assuming the time signal is good enough
when it may not be. (This seems to be the way of computer security - assume
something is good or good enough, then someone comes along an breaks
everything because the assumption was bad. Then everyone scrambles to get
better solutions, and other areas become assumed "good enough". Repeat
ad-nauseam).

I was pointed here by Magnus a month or two ago, after a fascinating
discussion of just how deep this time and timing rabbit-hole goes. I'm
quite impressed with this community - both in terms of deep knowledge and
overall friendliness. It's been a pleasure just lurking and soaking up some
knowledge since then.

Anyway, I just wanted to say "Hi all" before I start posting questions,
comments, etc. :)

Regards,
Erich


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