Eugene H. Spafford (born 1957) (also known as "Spaf") is a leading computer security expert. During the early formative years of the Internet, Spafford helped develop the semi-formal process by which the newly-formed Usenet was organized and managed as well as being influential in defining the standards of behavior governing the use of Usenet.

Spafford received his B.A. with a double major in Mathematics and Computer Sciences from the State University of New York at Brockport. He then attended the School of Information and Computer Sciences (now the College of Computing) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his M.S. in 1981, and Ph.D. in 1986 for his design and implementation of the original Clouds distributed operating system kernel.

Currently, Spafford is a professor of Computer Sciences at Purdue University, where he has served on the faculty since 1987. He is also a professor of Philosophy (courtesy), a professor of Communication (courtesy), and a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (courtesy). Spafford is also Executive Director of the Purdue CERIAS (Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security) and serves on a number of advisory and editorial boards.

Spafford has authored or co-authored four books on computer and computer security as well as over a hundred research papers, chapters and monographs. He is also the co-founder of Tripwire, a computer security company based in Portland, Oregon.

Quotes

• Axiom #1: "The Usenet is not the real world. The Usenet usually does not even resemble the real world."
• Corollary #1: "Attempts to change the real world by altering the structure of the Usenet is an attempt to work sympathetic magic -- electronic voodoo."
• Corollary #2: "Arguing about the significance of newsgroup names and their relation to the way people really think is equivalent to arguing whether it is better to read tea leaves or chicken entrails to divine the future."

• Axiom #2: "Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of sanity, intelligence, or common sense."
• Corollary #3: "An infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards could produce something like Usenet."
• Corollary #4: "They could do a better job of it."

• Axiom #3: "Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to Usenet."
• Corollary #5: "In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree on what constitutes the 10%."
• Corollary #6: "Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap, too."
• "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."

See also

• Usenet
• Purdue University
• The Morris Worm
• The Great Renaming
• Backbone Cabal
• "There is no Cabal"

External links

• Greplaw interview
• Home page
• Spafford Analysis of the Morris Internet worm