Proceedings of the Fourth European Workshop on System Security (2008)

Computer security is a large field, spanning areas as diverse as cryptography, formal verification, trust management, hardware design, and all aspects of what is commonly known as system software: the stuff under the hood that underlies all end applications. In our view, system software plays a pivotal role in the field of security. The security of the computer infrastructure as a whole depends on the integrity of the system software, as well as on the security mechanisms supported by it. In a world that is increasingly dependent on electronic infrastructure it is hardly surprising that much of the research is taking place at the system level. In computer laboratories in academia and industry alike, researchers are working out system-level solutions to deal with security problems in operating systems, networks, storage, forensics, intrusion detection, and many other issues. The outcome of such research ultimately determines whether we can trust our voting machines, medical equipment, bank transactions, phones, PCs, and indeed, all aspects of our daily lives that are controlled by computers.

What is surprising, is that, until now, Europe was lacking a venue for researchers to discuss their ideas with peers, to present their solutions, and to road-test the results of their research at an early stage. In practice, system security papers tend to be presented either in system venues where most of the audience is not involved in security, or in gatherings targeted at security in general, where they share the stage with cryptographers, formal verification researchers, and so on. This is where EuroSec comes in. From the outset, we had the following goals in mind: EuroSec is be a systems workshop of a high standard that specifically aims to foster discussion about system-level security. With its speedy review cycle, authors receive feedback quickly. In addition, by affiliating the workshop with a well-established systems conference (EuroSys), the audience and presenters benefit both from the presence of knowledgeable system researchers, and from an interesting program after the workshop.

While acceptance ratio and quality are not necessarily related, we are happy to say that we have been selective in accepting papers to the workshop. In the end, 32% of the papers were accepted and all papers received at least four reviews from our program committee. This workshop would never have taken place without the truly excellent program committee and external reviewers and we are grateful for all the hard work they put in.

In our opinion the resulting program is quite interesting and promises to spark lively discussions. In summary, the accepted papers address topics that range from low- level partitioning of resources to systems-solutions for preventing high-level phishing attacks. Papers discuss networking issues, secure storage, automated testing, analysis of authentication schemes and proper ways of doing forensics on encrypted drives.

All very different papers and presentations, but all in system security. They were selected for their novelty, and their potential for interesting debate. We sincerely hope you will enjoy the workshop.