SYDNEY, Australia -- 6 November 2002 -- The Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group (AUUG, Inc.) today announced that Luke Macpherson has won the John Lions Award for 2002 for his work on IP Spoofing and Aliasing for the BSD Network Stack.

The award commemorates the work of John Lions, who brought UNIX to Australia, wrote the famous commentary on the 6th Edition UNIX kernel, and founded AUUG in 1975.

The award is given based on a piece of work of relevance to open systems that is carried out by a full-time honours or post-graduate student. The award includes a one year membership of AUUG, and a cash prize of $1,000, taken from a fund established by AUUG, USENIX and an anonymous donor.

Luke's work was to develop Dynamic IP (internet protocol) aliasing for OpenBSD, a technology which allows one computer to initiate and accept connections on behalf of any device on the same network in a manner which is transparent to the other communicating party.

The primary application of this technology is to enable internet firewalls to provide fine-grained filtering of internet connections. By enabling firewalls to control not only the source and destination addresses of connections, but also the content of individual connections, the security provided by internet firewalls can be significantly improved.

David Purdue, speaking on behalf of the Lions Award Committee, said, "We chose this work because of its usefulness, its relevance to open systems, and the fact that it could promote the use of the open source OpenBSD operating system in security applications."

In response to receiving the award, Luke said, "I am very pleased to receive the John Lions award for research work in open systems, both because I have great respect for the influence John Lions has had on the field of open systems research, and because I am aware of the high standard of systems research being done by other Australian university students."

More details on the Lions award can be found at:
http://classic.auug.org.au/awards/lions/

An in-depth explanation of Luke's work can be found at:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lukem/thesis/

About AUUG Incorporated
AUUG Inc. is the Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group, a professional association for end users, corporations, developers and vendors that promotes UNIX® and related systems, including Linux and BSD. Dating from 1975, AUUG is a national body with chapters that organise local activities in most capital cities.

Visit http://classic.auug.org.au/ or contact AUUG at:

AUUG Inc.
PO Box 7071
Baulkham Hills BC NSW 2153
Australia
Free Call 1800 625 655, Fax 02 8824 9522
International: Tel +61 2 8824 9511, Fax +61 2 8824 9522
E-mail: auug@auug.org.au
ACN A00 166 36N, ABN 15 645 981 718

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