12 Facts About Gene Spafford

Gene Spafford attended the State University of New York at Brockport, graduating with a double major in mathematics and computer science in three years.

Gene Spafford then attended the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Gene Spafford initiated the Phage List as a response to the Morris Worm, one of the earliest computer worms.

Gene Spafford has served on the faculty at Purdue University in Indiana since 1987, and is a full professor of computer science.

Gene Spafford is executive director emeritus of Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, and founded its predecessor, the COAST Laboratory.

Gene Spafford wrote or co-authored four books on computer and computer security, including Practical Unix and Internet Security for O'Reilly Media, and over 150 research papers, chapters, and monographs.

Gene Spafford was the chief external technical advisor to the company Tripwire during their first few years.

Gene Spafford was graduate advisor to Dan Farmer who coded the freeware Computer Oracle and Password System tool.

In 2009, Gene Spafford discussed on C-SPAN an article in The New York Times that looked at how the Internet had been a conduit for many types of cybercrime.

Recent work from Gene Spafford has shown how to deceive adversaries and thus make computing systems more secure, drawing on his multi-disciplinary expertise in information security and psychology.

Gene Spafford is on the board of directors of the Computing Research Association and is the former chairperson of the Association for Computing Machinery's US Public Policy Committee.

Gene Spafford was a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee from 2003 to 2005 and an advisor to the National Science Foundation.