Melanie R. Rieback (born 26 October 1978) is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, chiefly known for her work regarding the privacy and security of

radio-frequency identification Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...

technology.

Personal life

Melanie Rieback was born in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

on October 26, 1978. and raised in

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. Her parents are David John Rieback and Eileen Sharon Rieback who worked at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

Education

She obtained her

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in both Computer Science and Biology from the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

in 2000. She received her Master‘s in Computer Science from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 2003. In 2008, she completed her PhD in Computer Science at

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

in the Netherlands.

Work

RFID Guardian

In an interview, Rieback stated the importance of the radio-frequency identification security, she stated ″If you are using RFID on cows, who cares? But, with a passport, it takes one breach at the wrong time and it could wreck it for the RFID industry.″ The RFID Guardian was developed when Rieback was a graduate student at the Vrije Universiteit. She was supervised by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. She created the first RFID virus to show the loopholes in its security. The technology "jams" the signal so that the tags cannot be read from a certain distance. However, this technology still has limitations because it can block only the responses but not kill the queries of the tags. However, they have no intentions of mass-producing the technology. Although there was concern about publishing the different ways that RFID tags could be exploited online, it causes the threats to this technology to no longer be theoretical. Also, it allows these concerns to be approached rather than proceeding with the idea that these threats do not exist.

Girl Geek Dinner NL

Girl Geek Dinner NL was founded as the Dutch chapter of

Girl Geek Dinners Girl Geek Dinners is an informal organisation that promotes women in the information technology industry, with 64 established chapters in 23 countries. The organization was founded in London, United Kingdom, by Sarah Lamb (''née'' Blow), who reali ...

. It is meant as a way to promote the idea of women pursuing fields that are typically male-dominated. Each dinner consists of talks from women who are exceptional in their field followed by a Q&A Session. Additionally, men are allowed to attend if they are invited by a female.

Radically Open Security

Radically Open Security was co-founded by Rieback, now its CEO. It is a non-profit organization that helps make the cyberworld more secure. They do only "non-fishy" jobs and provide step-by-step procedures in order for companies to do the same work without the company interfering. They also provide the tools and source code on their website to help others perform the same tasks that they do even if "it costs hemrepeat business". Radically Open Security provides services regarding code audits, cryptographic analysis, forensics, malware reversing, and more. Radically Open Security is also part of ACE Venture Lab

Other work

At the MIT Center for Genome Research/ Whitehead Institute, she worked on the Human Genome Project and co-authored the paper "Initial Sequencing and Analysis of the Human Genome".

Awards

In 2010, Rieback was a finalist for the ICT Professional of the Year Award and named one of the most successful women in the Netherlands by Viva Magazine Rieback was named as one of the top fifty Dutch inspirational women in 2016 in the list "Inspiring Fifty: Netherlands 2016".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rieback, Melanie American computer scientists Dutch computer scientists Dutch women computer scientists 1978 births Living people Delft University of Technology alumni University of Miami alumni Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam alumni 21st-century American scientists 21st-century American engineers 21st-century American women scientists Scientists from Cleveland Dutch women scientists Engineers from Ohio