In 1996, Stephanie Forrest, director of the Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society, co-authored the first paper to present a practical approach to automatically detecting cyber attacks against executing computer systems. Twenty-four years later, co-authors of the landmark paper—Steven Hofmeyr, Anil Somayaji, Thomas Longstaff along with Forrest—received the Test of Time Award at the virtual 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
The paper, titled A Sense of Self for Unix Processes, was selected for its lasting impact on the field of research and practice in computer security and privacy.
“The thing that was unusual about what we did was using such a simple modeling method,” said Forrest, in a video prepared for the ceremony.
The new honor from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers follows the Ten-Year Most Influential Paper bestowed by the International Conference on Software Engineering received in 2019.
Watch a short clip of the authors discussing the impact of their paper.