Oral history interview with Matt Bishop

Abstract

This interview with computer security pioneer Matt Bishop discusses his doctoral research (access controls and the Take-Grant Protection Model) working with Dorothy Denning at Purdue University and subsequent career as a computer scientist and computer security specialist at the Research Institute of Advanced Computer Science, on the faculty at Dartmouth University, and on the faculty at University of California-Davis. Bishop’s research is wide-ranging and the interview touches on his work on Unix security and vulnerabilities, network security, intrusion detection, electronic voting systems, and other areas. Bishop recounts the project he launched to provide public (Web) access to seminal early papers in computer security, an important effort to facilitate computer security history and learning from the past. And he relates the evolution of the UC-Davis Computer Security Lab and its influence on the research field and education in computer security. He also discusses his role as an educator and the authoring of his textbook Computer Security: Art and Science (2002).

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1116862, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.”