Peter M Shipley

2425 Channing Way
PMB# 587
Berkeley CA 94704-2209


+1 510-849-2230 (HOME)



Well, I do not have much to say at this point. I live in Berkeley, and am currently busy raising my son and working to pay off a mortgage.

I few years ago I spent the summer in germany, pictures are all uploaded at http://www.dis.org/deutschland/.

I do have a Chrismas/Birthday Wishlist so people can stop asking... but if you are wondering what I did last Chrismas here are some pictures.

I specialize in Unix host and network security, TCP/IP Network design and implementation (got my CCNP CCDA), site security security architecture and design, and in the past I have done WWW/CGI design X11 windowing system programming (Widget writing and GUI design) but that was a long time ago. Here are copies of my resumé in MSWord format, pdf format, rtf format, and txt format.

Most of my writing (including Lectures & Slides) can be found at http://www.dis.org/filez/#shipley .

Jpg of me and Car I spend most of my days working on random programming projects and sorta fixing up the house, and by night i go dancing (mostly Goth and Industrial) in the local nightclubs. Some of my favorite bands are Ministry, Front 242, REDNEX and KMFDM, and the like. Some of my favorite movies are "Girlfriend from Hell", "Tank Girl" (yes, I kinda liked it), and "The Feebles".

I also hit [attend] technical computer conferences (such as USENIX and DEFCON). Sci-fi cons like BayCon are also fun to attend assuming con security is not doing their now famous Nazi-asshole impressions. (here is a list of quotes overheard at Baycon). The last fiction book I read was Snowcrash although I seem to mostly read tech papers and reference manuals of various sorts.

In the past:

I conceived and wrote the very first automated network security scanner (NetSweep) way back in 1986 (years before ISS and other copycats). This was long before people believed in network based security, almost everyone back then felt that security was a "host based" problem, the scanner was meant as a proof of concept to show there was a problem from the network prospective.

Also back then (late 80's) I was one of the first to create and maintain a significant bug & exploit database. When CERT was later founded they used this collection a seed resource for their security knowledge database, as per their request.

Founded the UC Berkeley's OCF (Open Computing Facility) in (1988). The OCF is UC Berkeley's first all-volunteer, student-run, service group dedicated to free computing for all University of California at Berkeley.

In '92 I helped founded one of the premier ISP in the Bay Area (DNAI.COM). I ended up getting screwed out of my stock when one of the other founders forged and back-dated the stock certificates then waited till the statute of limitations expired before selling the company to RCN. I learned a lot about business from that experance.

in '93 I participated in the cypherpunks as a founding member hosting one of the first remailers and helping distribute PGP before anyone really heard of it.

Around the same time I was one of the original supporters/sponsors of tpc.int the original Free Internet Fax Server. I also designed and hosted their WWW services before web servers were known or popular.

Around '93 or '94 I started thinking about network "auto-defense" and "reactive firewalls", I first filed a patent on these ideas in '96.
Now I have a couple patents on the fundamentals of IDS #6,119,236 and #6,304,975.

Since then I have various amounts of independent security research. One of which was proving that wardialing is still a significant security problem. When I proposed the idea in '97 most people in the security community called it "old news" and told me it was "not a problem anymore". After publishing results showing that companies were as vulnerable to dialup attack as they are to internet attacks three companies released a phone auditing products, while every security auditor added it to their list of deliverables. Now if each of these companies would grant me some stock for making their business possible....
Slides from a talk I did on is available on my writings page.

Around 1999-2000 I invented Wardriving, while I am not the first person to go out and search for open wireless LANS (a few before me ventured around with in a with a laptop, pencil & paper manualy scribbling notes). I was first to automate it all with dedicated software and a GPS. When I started this project the usage or WEP was around 15%, after going public with my findings, a year later WEP usage is now 33%. Thus is good to know people are getting the message. Some (outdated) maps I generated from these exercises can be found at http://www.dis.org/wl/maps/. This research was featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Newseek.

From 2002-2005 I took a lot of time off and traveled a bit mostly in London, Amsterdam, and parts of Germany.

I still drive a old black Saturn SL2, license plate "LIV2HAK". (This picture is from a interview I did for NextStep that was aired on the Discovery Channel). I was also interviewed by KRON TV and TechTV In San Francisco. Over the years i've been in just about almost every local or national news show or newspaper. Most of these were interviews dealing with hacking and the risks to the Internet (etc etc). Eventually, I guess, I will have divx images of these online.

casual 382 bit, commercial 510 bit and military 1024 bit PGP keys available.


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