Biography:

Professor Alan Marshall holds the chair in Communications Networks at the University of Liverpool where he is director of the Advanced Networks Group.  He is a senior member of IEEE, a member of ComSoc, IFIP TPC6, and a Fellow of the IET. He has spent over 24 years working in the Telecommunications and Defence Industries. He has been active on national committees making recommendations on future directions for Telecommunications

in the UK. He is visiting professor in network security at the University of Nice/CNRS, France, and Adjunct Professor for Research at Sunway University Malaysia. He has published over 200 scientific papers and holds a number of joint patents in the areas of communications and network security. He has formed a successful spin-out company Traffic Observation & Management (TOM) Ltd specialising in intrusion detection & prevention for wireless networks.  His research interests include Network architectures and protocols; Mobile and Wireless networks; Network Security; high-speed packet switching, Quality of Service & Experience (QoS/QoE) architectures; and Distributed Haptics. He also recently discovered and reported the world’s first airborne virus for wifi networks, termed ‘Chameleon’, which has received significant press throughout the world.

Keynote Speech Title:  Public Access Wireless Networks:Vulnerabilities, Detection and Mitigation Strategies

Abstract

  This talk identifies a range of vulnerabilities and threats that can be mounted against domestic and public wireless access networks that employ 802.11 (or Wi-Fi) standards.  Compared to enterprise or corporate networks that permit wireless access in a controlled manner, such networks are necessarily more open in nature, in order to provide access to a greater range of users and their wireless devices. Consequently the rapid increase in the use of these networks has led to an associated increase in the number and types of attacks that can be mounted against them, by malicious or criminal users.  The talk will outline the types of attacks that can be launched against these types of networks, and identify detection and mitigation strategies.