Contact Eric Burger
Eric’s office is in the Virginia Tech Research Center at 900 N Glebe Road in Arlington, in the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative suite, office No. 3-3032 on the third floor.
He’s typically in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but might be available by appointment on Monday and Friday.
- Office phone: (571)-838-3090
- Email: ewburger@vt.edu
Eric says:
Be aware that as a telecom geek, the office phone will try to find me wherever I am. Be mindful if you are calling at midnight. Likewise, if it is midday in Washington, it is midnight in Beijing.
Unless the sky is falling, I am unresponsive Friday afternoon through Sunday. If the sky is falling, send an urgent email. Otherwise, I’ll get back to you Sunday or Monday.
If you’re asking for money, make sure your interests match my funded research interests. If you are selling stuff, I don’t buy much stuff. If you want to fund research, please contact me.
Special Note from Eric for Gmail Users
There appears to be a “feature” for Gmail users in that it either selects the wrong public key or thinks it is doing the right thing by using a public key for a canonical email address instead of the alias, rendering the message undecryptable to me.
If you want to send me an encrypted email, do not use the Gmail web client. Rather, use your favorite mail application, like Mail.app (MacOS), Outlook (Windows), or Thunderbird (most anything).
Configuring your Mac for secure email
Get an X.509 certificate: If you’re at Virginia Tech, VT4Help has instructions for generating and installing a certificate. If you’re not at Virginia Tech, ask your IT support people for an X.509 S/MIME signing and encryption certificate. If getting your institution to issue a certificate is not an option, my favorite place to get a free email certificate is Actalis.
Install the Certificate: If you get the certificate from Actalis, follow their instructions, restart Mail.app, and check off the seal (signing) or padlock (encrypting) on the right hand side of the message composition window.
Note that to encrypt, you need the recipient’s public key. If they send you a signed or encrypted email, MacOS will automatically store it for you. You can see that in your address book.
If you have someone’s public email key, there will be a little certificate icon next to their email address in the address book.
Apple Support
Find a Mail User Guide.
Don’t forget PGP
If you’ve taken any of my courses, you’ll know there are issues with X.509, some of which require certificate pinning to mitigate. The next best thing is PGP. Check out GPGtools.