Vern Edward Paxson is a Professor of

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He also leads the Networking and Security Group at the

International Computer Science Institute The International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) is an independent, non-profit research organization located in Berkeley, California, United States. Since its founding in 1988, ICSI has maintained an affiliation agreement with the University ...

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. His interests range from transport protocols to intrusion detection and worms. He is an active member of the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

(IETF) community and served as the chair of the IRTF from 2001 until 2005. From 1998 to 1999 he served on the

IESG The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

as Transport Area Director for the IETF. In 2006 Paxson was inducted as a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

(ACM). The ACM's Special Interest Group on Data Communications (SIGCOMM) gave Paxson its 2011 award, "for his seminal contributions to the fields of Internet measurement and Internet security, and for distinguished leadership and service to the Internet community." The annual

SIGCOMM Award The SIGCOMM Award recognizes lifetime contribution to the field of communication networks. The award is presented in the annual SIGCOMM Technical Conference. The awardees have been: * 2022 Henning Schulzrinne * 2021 Hari Balakrishnan * 2020 Amin ...

recognizes lifetime contribution to the field of communication networks. Paxson is also the original author of the

flex Flex or FLEX may refer to: Computing * Flex (language), developed by Alan Kay * FLEX (operating system), a single-tasking operating system for the Motorola 6800 * FlexOS, an operating system developed by Digital Research * FLEX (protocol), a comm ...

lexical analyzer and the

Zeek Zeek is a free and open-source software network analysis framework. Vern Paxson began development work on Zeek in 1995 at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Zeek is a network security monitor (NSM) but can also be used as a network intrusion detect ...

intrusion detection system.

Backscatter In physics, backscatter (or backscattering) is the reflection of waves, particles, or signals back to the direction from which they came. It is usually a diffuse reflection due to scattering, as opposed to specular reflection as from a mirror, a ...

is a term coined by Vern Paxson to describe

Internet background noise Internet background noise (IBN, also known as Internet background radiation) consists of data packets on the Internet which are addressed to IP addresses or ports where there is no network device set up to receive them. These packets often contain ...

resulting from a

DDoS In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host A ...

attack using multiple spoofed addresses. Paxson earned a PhD in 1997 at Berkeley under Domenico Ferrari.

References

External links

Vern Paxson's homepage
American computer programmers Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Computer security academics UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty Year of birth missing (living people) {{compu-bio-stub