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ACM HONORS
INVENTORS OF LANDMARK SOFTWARE
CONCEPT
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NEW
YORK, March 15,
2005 -- ACM has given the 2004
Software System Award to Secure Network Programming
(SNP), the first secure sockets layer for Internet
applications, aimed at achieving secure network
programming for widespread use. SNP was designed and
implemented by Raghuram Bindignavle, Simon Lam, Shaowen
Su, and Thomas Woo in 1993, while at the University of
Texas at Austin Networking Research Laboratory. Their
work was funded by the National Security Agency and the
National Science Foundation. The Software System Award
is given to an institution or individual(s) recognized
for developing software systems that have had a lasting
influence, reflected in contributions to concepts and/or
commercial acceptance. This award carries a $10,000
prize, and financial support for the award is provided
by IBM.
The recipients invented secure sockets as
a high-level approach to securing Internet applications.
In 1993, they designed and prototyped the first secure
sockets layer, named SNP, which provides a user
interface closely resembling sockets. Their goal was to
enable existing socket programs to be retrofitted with
appropriate security measures with only minor
modifications. SNP also encapsulates security sensitive
information, which prevents accidental or intentional
disclosure by an application program.
Many of the
design choices in SNP can be found in today's secure
sockets layers used between browsers and Internet
servers. For example, the secure sockets layer SSL,
later designed and built by Netscape, is widely used for
securing communications between browsers and servers, as
well as other Internet applications.
About the
recipients:
Raghuram Bindignavle is a consultant on
Linux-based and wireless technologies of use to large
swaths of rural India that are not covered by
traditional land lines. Prior to returning to India, he
worked in various software companies in the United
States. He received a B.E. degree in Computer Science at
the Regional Engineering College of the University of
Allahabad in India. He earned an M.A. degree in Computer
Science from the University of Texas at
Austin.
Simon S. Lam is Professor and Regents
Chair in Computer Sciences, and Director of the
Networking Research Laboratory, at the University of
Texas at Austin, where he has been on the faculty since
1977. He served as department chair from 1992 to 1994.
He received a B.S.E.E. degree from Washington State
University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering
from UCLA. He served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking from 1995 to 1999. An ACM
Fellow and an IEEE Fellow, Dr. Lam received the 2004 W.
Wallace McDowell Award from IEEE Computer Society and
the 2004 ACM SIGCOMM Award. He is a co-recipient of the
1975 Leonard G. Abraham Prize and the 2001 William R.
Bennett Prize from IEEE Communications
Society.
Shaowen Su is Managing Director of
Zero2ipo Ltd., a financial advisory services and
investment management firm in China. From 2003 - 2004,
he was CFO of Todaytech Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong. Mr. Su
was General Manager at ACR Ventures, a Hong Kong-based
venture capital company, and was selected as one of the
"most active VCs of the year" in 2001 by Digital Fortune
magazine. His experience includes software development
and marketing in the U.S. with National Instruments,
Intel, and NEC. Mr. Su received a Bachelor of Physics
degree from Peking University and an M.S. in Computer
Science from University of Texas at
Austin.
Thomas Woo, a Director at Bell Labs,
heads the Mobile Networking and Internet Management
Research Department. He previously headed the Bell Labs
Networking Systems Research Department. In between, he
spent two years at RedWave Networks, a Silicon Valley
startup, as Chief Network Architect and VP of Software
Engineering. Dr. Woo has received more than 10 U.S.
patents. He is an Editor of IEEE Wireless Communications
and was an adjunct faculty member at the University of
Pennsylvania. He received a B.Sc. degree in Computer
Science (First Class Honor) from the University of Hong
Kong, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science
from the University of Texas at Austin.
ACM will present these and other awards at
the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 11, 2005, in San
Francisco, CA.
About
ACM
ACM
(http://www.acm.org/)
is widely recognized as the premier organization for
computing professionals, delivering a broad array of
resources that advance the computing and IT disciplines,
enable professional development, and promote policies
and research that benefit society. For further
information, contact Virginia Gold 212-626-0505 or vgold@acm.org.
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