Chris Mitchell

Contents

Contact details, Career, Personal, Research interests and activities, Teaching materials, List of publications, Security and other useful links, Useful forms, LaTeX resources, PhD student resources, Footnotes

Contact details

Tel. (direct line) 01784 443423

Tel. (secretary) 01784 443101

Fax: 01784 430766

Email: C.Mitchell@rhul.ac.uk (work) or me@chrismitchell.net (home).

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Career

Prior to his appointment as Professor of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London, in March 1990, he was a Project Manager in the Networks and Communications Laboratory of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Bristol, which he joined in June 1985. Between 1979 and 1985 he was at Racal-Comsec Ltd. (Salisbury, UK), part of Racal Electronics Plc, latterly as Chief Mathematician.

Since joining Royal Holloway in 1990 he has played a role in the development of the Information Security Group, and helped launch the MSc in Information Security in 1992 and the MSc in Secure Electronic Commerce in 1999. He spent the academic year 1996-97 on leave of absence from Royal Holloway as a full-time consultant at Europay International, Waterloo, Belgium.

He continues to act as a consultant on a variety of topics in information security.

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Personal

Born in Polegate (Sussex, UK) in 1953, Chris Mitchell attended school in Polegate and Bexhill-on-Sea (Sussex, UK). He received his B.Sc. (1975) and Ph.D. (1979) degrees in Mathematics from Westfield College, University of London.

Since 1983 he has lived in Codford, a small village in Wiltshire.

Here are some pictures of me receiving a cake for my 50th birthday!

A few personal photo albums are now available here.

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Research interests and activities

His main research interests are in information security and combinatorial mathematics and its applications.

The focus of much of his recent research has been on trusted computing and its applications. A summary of recent ISG contributions in this area is provided here.

He has made contributions to a number of international collaborative projects. Completed projects include:

• Open Trusted Computing, an EU 6th Framework Integrated Project, defined and implemented an open Trusted Computing framework.
• Distributed Trust, an EPSRC funded project that investigated the use of trusted computing technologies to support greater levels of trust in the Grid.
• He was a member of the EPSRC-funded Network of Excellence on Digital Electronic Identity, led by Dr. M. Rajarajan of City University. This two-year collaboration, running from 2008 to 2010, involves a range of industrial and academic partners from the UK and India.
• Mobile VCE (Core 3), a UK collaborative programme of research in mobile telecommunications, which ended in September 2005,
• USB_Crypt, an EU 5th framework project that developed a high performance USB security token, and integrated it into a variety of applications, which ended in December 2003,
• Mobile VCE (Core 2), a UK collaborative programme of research in mobile telecommunications, which ended in September 2003,
• PAMPAS (Pioneering Advanced Mobile Privacy And Security), an EU 5th Framework project that established a roadmap for future European research on mobile privacy and security, which ended in July 2003,
• SHAMAN (Security for Heterogeneous Access in Mobile Applications and Networks), an EU 5th Framework project which examined security issues for post 3rd generation mobile telecommunications networks, which ended in February 2003,
• Finger_Card, an EU 5th framework project which developed a smart card with an integrated fingerprint reader and integrated it into a variety of applications, which ended in June 2002,
• USECA, an EU ACTS programme project on mobile systems security, which ended in 2000 (in which RHUL acted as a sub-contractor),
• ASPeCT, an EU ACTS programme project on security for third generation mobile telecommunications systems, which ended in 1998,
• 3GS3, a DTI/EPSRC LINK project on security for third generation mobile telecommunications systems, which ended in 1996. The 3GS3 project produced three Technical reports, all of which are available on line:
1. Technical Report 1 (on Security features, i.e. Security services) - available in zipped pdf;
2. Technical Report 2 (on Security mechanisms) - available in zipped postscript or zipped pdf;
3. Technical Report 3 (on Security architecture) - available in zipped pdf.

He is currently convenor of Technical Panel 2 of BSI IST/33, dealing with Security Mechanisms and providing input to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC27 on which he currently serves as a UK Expert and as editor of three international security standards: ISO/IEC 11770-2 (key management using symmetric techniques - 2nd edition), ISO/IEC 19772 (authenticated encryption) and, as co-editor with Bart Preneel, ISO/IEC 9797-1 (MACs based on block ciphers - 4th edition). He previously served as editor of ISO/IEC 9796-2 (digital signatures giving message recovery - 2nd edition, and a subsequent amendment), ISO/IEC 9798-2 (entity authentication based on symmetric encryption - 2nd edition), ISO/IEC 9798-4 (entity authentication based on MACs - 2nd edition), ISO/IEC 9798-5 (zero-knowledge based authentication protocols - 1st edition), ISO/IEC 9798-6 (manual authentication protocols - 1st edition), ISO/IEC 10118-3 (dedicated hash-functions - 1st edition), and ISO/IEC 18033-1 (encryption - 1st edition). Details of published ISO standards are available from the ISO Web Page.

He served as a member of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board between 2003 and 2014, and as a member of the DoCoMo Euro-Labs Advisory Board between 2005 and 2009. He has been co-editor-in-chief of Designs, Codes and Cryptography since January 2011, and became the section editor for Section D (Security in Computer Systems and Networks) of The Computer Journal in January 2014. He was a senior editor of IEEE Communications Letters between 2012 and 2015. He has served as a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Information Security, Information Management and Computer Security, KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems, and the Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing and Dependable Applications. He is a member of the accreditation board of Computer and Communications Security Abstracts. He is a member of the Panel of Assessors for the British Computer Society's BCS Professional Advice Register: Security Section. He was appointed as a member of the UKAS Information Security Technical Advisory Forum in 2003.

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Teaching materials

The slides for a PhD student session on Plain English are available here.

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Security and other useful links

Security Workshops at Royal Holloway

Information, including copies of presentations and participant lists, are available for the following security workshops.

• SHAMAN Project Workshop - Security for mobile systems beyond 3G, 25th July 2002.
• Open Workshop on Trusted Computing, 30th March 2004.

Cryptographers

If you are interested in cryptography (and/or cryptographers), then the following web pages are recommended.

• Jan Camenisch's homepages of some cryptographers.
• Kevin McCurley's cryptography research links page.

Upcoming conferences

For information about the IACR conferences (Crypto, Eurocrypt and Asiacrypt) see the IACR web site.

A useful list of conferences with a security component is available here.

Security literature links

• An electronic version of the invaluable Handbook of Applied Cryptography is available.
• The arXiv.org site provides open access to a huge range of e-prints.
• Cipher is the electronic newsletter of the IEEE TC on Security and Privacy.
• An extremely useful collection of literature on password-based authentication is available here.
• For information about Internet payment systems have a look at the Electronic Payments Forum.
• For a most enjoyable read, have a look at this on-line publication - the Journal of Craptology.
• Leading academic journals on Cryptology include: Designs, Codes and Cryptography, and the Journal of Cryptology.
• The Encryption Learning Center provides a nice introduction to cryptography.

General research links

• The PhD comics web page is compulsory reading for all PhD students (and supervisors of PhD students).
• The on-line encyclopaedia of integer sequences is not only a valuable research tool but also enormous fun.
• The Mathematics Genealogy Project is a source of fascinating information.

Random but fun links

• The www.publicprofiler.org page gives the concentrations of people in the various parts of the world who possess any given surname.
• Here is a top page for music (and badger) lovers.
• Here is a link to another Chris Mitchell's rather fun page.

Security standards links

• See ANSI online for information on ANSI standards.
• Information on CEN standards is available from here.
• The Common Criteria Project Home Page provides access to the latest version (v2.1) of the Common Criteria, which are technically identical to ISO/IEC 15408 Parts 1-3.
• For copies of the EMV standards, and related documentation, go to the EMVCo site.
• The ETSI web site allows downloading of ETSI standards, including those for GSM.
• All the standards produced by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) are available for free download here.
• General information on IEEE standards is available here. Specific information on IEEE P1363 is available at the P1363 home page. The IEEE 802 series standards (=ISO/IEC 8802) are now freely downloadable here.
• The Internet (IETF) documents, including current drafts, are all available at the IETF home page. Expired drafts are available here.
• There is now an online version of the ISO register of cryptographic algorithms.
• For information regarding published ISO standards, see the ISO web site. Note that those ISO standards that are publicly available (only a small number I'm afraid) are available here. There is also an ISO/IEC SC27 web-site, containing general information about security standards. ISO has introduced the extremely useful Online Browsing Platform, which provides a way of searching for definitions and a range of other material from the introductory parts of ISO and ISO/IEC standards.
• The ISO 17799 forum page contains much useful information about ISO/IEC 17799.
• For information regarding published ITU-T recommendations, click here.
• The NIST FIPS publications are all available on-line here.
• The 3GPP documents (technical specifications for a 3rd generation mobile system) are available from here.

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LaTeX resources

General information

• A very useful introduction to LaTeX can be found here.
• Another good place to start is the TeX Users Group web page.
• Yet another excellent introduction to LaTeX, BibTeX, document writing, and much else besides, is available here.
• What amounts to a free and comprehensive book on LaTeX is available here.
• The MiKTeX distribution of LaTeX can be downloaded from here.
• The Short Math Guide for Latex covers a host of useful material relating to typesetting Mathematics.
• I find the Great, Big List of LaTeX Symbols invaluable.
• Last but not least, try the TeX Frequently Asked Questions list.

Handling graphics

• If you need to include pictures in a LaTeX document, then good advice is available here or here.
• A small command line program called jpeg2eps will convert images from jpeg to eps format.

General tools

• If you need an editor to create and modify your LaTeX files, then WinEdt is very highly recommended (although there is a modest licence fee). Another useful tool is TeXnicCenter, which has the advantage of being completely free.
• lgrind is a tool that pre-formats source code in various programming languages for best presentation when included in a LaTeX file. Information on setting up lgrind for windows platforms is available here.
• The tth tool will convert from LaTeX to html format.
• Figures and tables can sometimes be a little tricky to manage, especially if you have a lot! There is some helpful advice on the University of Cambridge Engineering Department pages.

Bibliography tools

• A lot of useful information on use of the BibTeX bibliography tool is available here. By the way, it is important to be aware that some of the BibTeX provided on the web, e.g. at the Citeseer website, is not very useful, and is often completely erroneous. There is no substitute for compiling your own correct entries (or at least checking entries you are importing from elsewhere).
• The jabref tool can be used to manipulate BibTeX entries. However, whilst this may be a useful tool, remember that if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Precision and completeness is extremely important when dealing with bibliographies.

Ph.D. thesis templates

• A template used by a number of past Ph.D. students, particularly those completing theses in Pure Mathematics, is available here. Please note that there is no guarantee that this template will generate a thesis in accordance with the current college regulations - please check the regulations before, during and after writing your thesis.
• Stephen Wolthusen has developed a template specifically designed for RHUL Maths/ISG students. The complete package is available here. As in other cases, there is no guarantee that this template will generate a thesis in accordance with the current (ever changing) college regulations.
• Another PhD thesis template developed within the ISG has been produced by Saif Alkuwari. The zipped package is available here.

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Footnotes

Page most recently updated on 17/3/20. Please send all comments and corrections to me@chrismitchell.net.

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