So, I just came back from FIRST2008 and a typical conference discussion over beer has turned - again! - to academic security research.
I lamented and ranted and rambled about it (here, here, here), but I am still shocked. I come from academic background myself and it is unthinkable to me that a research physicist today will write a thesis on 2nd Law of Newton or will set to prove that objects tend to fall down while dropped. Or that they, in fact, "fall up."
However, that is the type of stuff I see in academic security papers that I occasionally get to review. Based on our FIRST conversation, other people who happen to retain ties to academia are reporting the same: research work that confuses "phishing" with "fast flux networks" (thanks Jose), inventing a new intrusion detection "paradigm, " and all sorts of other bizarre crap continues to be cooked and submitted to publications.
When will this end? Why can't you people tackle REAL problems? Or at least useful and hard classic problems? Or, at the very least, learn WTF is going on the real world of operational security before you do ANYTHING? The maybe you stop saying things like "in general, IDS is considered to be a security tool" as if it was some kind of Zen wisdom (a quote from a pathetic excuse for a paper that I reviewed recently...)
