Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Computer and communications security

It is a pleasure and honor to present these 27 papers selected for the 9th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in our annual Proceedings. Between them these papers cover major portions of our very diverse discipline, and attest to the vitality and creativity of researchers and practitioners who contribute to its development. Information security has become a "hot" field in recent years with considerable awareness of its importance at the highest levels of corporate, political and social leadership in our society. Unfortunately, being a "hot" field sometimes generates more heat than light! It is important for the research community to maintain its vitality and grow with the field. Hopefully, our insights will provide more light than heat, eventually leading to the routine construction of secure systems (whatever that means) by practitioners who can apply these results to real systems.The CCS conference has had a spirit of innovation, growth and comprehensiveness from its inception in 1993. Personally it has been a real privilege to be Program Chair again after 1993 and 1994. Much has changed in the ensuing years. In 1993, we accepted 27 papers out of 60 submissions with the assistance of a Program Committee of 21 members assisted by 28 delegated reviewers. This year we accepted 27 papers out of 153 submissions with the help of a much bigger Program Committee, numbering 47 assisted by 34 delegated reviewers. For the first time CCS conducted a virtual Program Committee meeting on the web. As I discovered, this entails a lot more work for the Program Chair. I am indebted to my doctoral student Xinwen Zhang who labored beyond the call of duty to make this happen. I believe the experiment was successful enough to warrant trying it again in the future. CCS continues to offer cutting-edge tutorials and specialized workshops. This year we have 4 workshops which is a record for us, largely due to enthusiastic solicitation of proposals by our General Chair Sushil Jajodia and strong response from the workshop chairs.CCS must continue to innovate and grow as our discipline becomes more pervasive within the Information Technology community. I have heard some people complain about the number of research conferences that have proliferated in the information security discipline. I happen to think this is good for the field. It does make it harder to keep on top of everything that is going on in the community, as is inevitable in a growing discipline. More competition can only be positive. No single conference has a monopoly on publication of high quality papers. Conferences that do not innovate and grow with the field will be left behind or become niche players catering to specialized audiences. It is the mission of CCS to sustain its position as the world's premier security research conference. I am proud to say this year's program contributes to that mission in a very strong way.There are many people to thank for their efforts in the continued success of CCS: authors, reviewers, program committee members, conference officers, workshop chairs and workshop program committee members. Last but not least, we must thank our attendees. It is a long list. Without the commitment and interest of so many people this conference would not be possible. Our community is fortunate to have a large number of talented researchers and practitioners willing to participate in CCS in various ways.Given this extensive talent and interest I am confident that CCS has a bright future. I am also confident that with its tradition of innovation and vitality it will change and grow, at least as much as it has in the past nine years. Welcome and enjoy the conference.