The usual mixture of free pizza, beer and talks recently made for another smashing London Google Open Source Jam. The topic was Security, and the talks showed just how wide-ranging the subject is:

  • Ben LaurieCaja, a framework for running untrusted Javascript

  • Ben Smyth — Security protocols and how to express them, and why online voting could work

  • Jon Cowie — The Sysadmin view of Security: Virtual Machines, Ruby on Rails, packages and the complexities of auditing it all

  • Sam Mbale — Trust between users of applications on social networking sites

  • Douglas Squirrel — Real world PKI. A play in 3 acts. With props!

  • Glyn Wintle — Your personal data isn’t safe, and online voting can’t work

  • Gervase Markham — Phishing for profit and more profit

  • Joe Walnes — Cross site scripting and injection attacks

Each talk was limited to 5 minutes, with some trying to run longer — but we have a gong for such cases — and some running shorter. Questions are encouraged at the end of the talk, and in many cases lead to a discussion later. Of course, the talks were only part of the evening. Many impromptu discussions, not limited to Security, created debate on everything from Australian politics to mobile phones to automated testing.

We hope our guests found the evening as fun and informative as we did. If you are in or around London, you are welcome to join us for the next Open Source Jam. Keep your eye on our London OS Jam site for an announcement of the next Jam.

Source: Google Open Source Blog