Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Keynote speaker: Dr. Manish Patel, Senior Lecturer, The Open University
Title: Exploring the atmosphere of Mars with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission
Abstract:
Searching for signs of life beyond the Earth is a one of the primary aims of space exploration. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is a mission to Mars, which seeks to help answer this question.
TGO is a joint European-Russian mission to explore the atmosphere of Mars from orbit in unprecedented detail. The mission launched in March 2016, with Mars arrival on 19th October 2016. Investigating trace gases in the atmosphere is the primary purpose of the mission – gases such as methane, water vapour and ozone. Methane is a particularly interesting gas, in that its variable presence in the atmosphere of Mars is not expected; on Earth, the majority of the methane in the terrestrial atmosphere is produced by life. Hence, its possible presence on Mars opens up a tantalising possibility that this trace gas may be a sign of the presence of (past or present) life on Mars. Gases such as water vapour are critical to the radiative balance of the atmosphere, and by measuring its presence and isotopic composition, we can begin to understand how the atmosphere of Mars has evolved over time, and how Mars lost its water.
The Open University co-leads one of the atmospheric composition instruments (called NOMAD). Here, I will present the mission and its background to you, the technical details of the instrument and update you on the latest status of the mission and the results to date from the orbiter.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Keynote speaker: Dr. Laszlo Erdodi, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oslo
Title: Development, Challenges and Perspectives in Offensive Security
Abstract:
The offensive security is defined as an approach to protecting computer systems in a way that the attacking methods are in the focus. Since almost everyone can be the target of attackers offensive security approach is inevitable when protecting systems. In the practice, this means that analyzing and simulating cyber attacks have become essential elements of the modern digital security. Ethical hacking, that is a practical implementation of the offensive security approach, involves the testing of the security of IT systems by trying to find and exploit security vulnerabilities in computer systems.
The presentation gives an overview, in the timeframe of 75 min, on current advanced techniques in ethical hacking with reflection to the challenges/innovations of the near future. The presentation covers the state of the art summary of ethical hacking techniques, as well as the different new attacking directions that might be relevant for hacking in the future such as for example hardware hacking, machine learning in hacking attacks etc.
