Peter Sommer has been Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Information Systems Integrity Group since 1994. His main research interest is the reliability of digital evidence, a subject which encompasses forensic computing and e-commerce. He has helped developed the LSE’s social-science orientated courses on information security management. In the last Parliament he was Specialist Advisor to the UK House of Commons Trade & Industry Select Committee while it scrutinised UK policy and legislation on e-commerce. He was part of the UK Office of Science Technology’s Foresight Study, Cyber Trust, Cyber Crime. He sits on a number of UK Government Advisory Panels. Recent research contracts have been carried out for the UK Financial Services Authority and the European Commission’s Safer Internet Action Plan. He is currently part of the European FIDIS Network of Excellence and also a member of the Reference Group (review mechanism) of another European Commission initiative, PRIME.
He is an external examiner at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, and an advisor on a number of law enforcement and other committees concerned with cyber-crime and emergency response. He has advised Centrex, which provides hi-tech crime training to UK law enforcement, and TWED-DE, a US DoJ-funded exercise to develop training on digital evidence. He has also lectured at UK and US law enforcement seminar on cyber-evidence and intelligence matters.
He was on the programme committee for FIRST 2000 in Chicago.
Peter Sommer acts as an advisor and surveyor for leading insurers of complex computer systems. His first expert witness assignment was in 1985 and his casework has included the Datastream Cowboy / Rome Labs international systems hack, the Demon v Godfrey Internet libel, NCS Operation Cathedral ( a global Internet paedophile conspiracy) Operation Ore (arising from a website involved in the large-scale distribution of photographs of child abuse, NHTCU Operation Blossom (an alleged gobal conspiracy to distribute “warez” – pirated software) and many other cases involving such diverse crimes as multiple murder, forgery, software piracy, bank fraud, credit card cloning and the sale of Official Secrets.
He is on the Advisory Council of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, a UK-based think tank.
Publications
Under the pseudonym "Hugo Cornwall": The Hacker's Handbook, Random-Century, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989. DataTheft, Heinemann Professional, 1987, Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990. The Industrial Espionage Handbook , Century 1991, Ebury Press, 1992. Various articles. 1985-present, in the Guardian - some available via Guardian OnLine. Other national newspaper and magazine articles available via FT Profile and Dialog.
Under own name: The PC Security Guide 1993-1994, Elsevier, 1993. Why Legislation is the not the answer; the limits of the Law Compacs 91, 15th International Conference on Computer Audit, Control and Security, IAA. Computer Forensics: an Introduction Compsec '92, Elsevier. Computer-Aided Industrial Espionage Compsec '93, Elsevier. Industrial Espionage: Analysing the Risk Compsec '94, Elsevier. Various practitioner-orientated articles appear passim in Computer Fraud and Security Bulletin, published by Elsevier and Virus News International and Secure Computing, published by West Coast Publishing. The computer security sections of Handbook of Security and Purchasing and Supply Guide to Guide to IT both published by Croner. Imaged documents code,. Computer Fraud & Security, Apr 1996. England ponders trade secrets law, Computer Fraud & Security, Jan 1998 Investigating Computer Crime (book review) Computer Fraud & Security, Sep 1997. Fraud Watch: A Guide for Business - Ian Huntington and David Davies(book review). Computer Fraud & Security, Apr 1995. Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway - Author: Winn Schwartau (book review). Computer Fraud & Security, Jun 1995. Computer-Related Risks - Author: Peter G Neumann. (book review) Computer Fraud & Security, Jul 1995 Downloads, Logs and Captures: Evidence from Cyberspace Journal of Financial Crime, October, 1997, 5JFC2 138-152; Intrusion Detection Systems as Evidence RAID 98 Conference, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; also in Intrusion detection systems as evidence, Computer Networks, Volume 31, Issues 23-24, 14 December 1999, Pages 2477-2487. Legal Reliability in Large Scale Distributed Systems IEEE Symposium on Reliable Information Systems, COAST/Purdue University, 1998; Digital Footprints: Assessing Computer Evidence Criminal Law Review (Special Edition, December 1998, pp 61-78)Sommer P., ‘Digital Footprints: Assessing Computer Evidence’, Criminal Law Review. Special Edition. December 1998 Co-author: CyberCrime: Risk and Response. International Chamber of Commerce ICC Publication 621, 1999 Sommer, P: Evidence in Internet Paedophilia Cases Computer and Telecommunications Law Review, Vol 8 Issue 7; [2002] CTLR, pp 176-184 Sommer, P: Evidence in Internet Paedophilia Cases; a case for the Defence in “Policing Paedophiles on the Internet” ed McVean & Spindler, New Police Bookshop for the John Grieve Centre, 2003. Sommer, Peter. The future for the Policing of Cybercrime Computer Fraud & Security Bulletin, January 2004, pp 8-12 Co-author: CyberCrime: Risk and Response. International Chamber of Commerce ICC Publication 621, 1999 Cybercrime (co-author) and Computer Aids chapters in Fraud: Law, Procedure and Practice, Lexis-Nexis / Butterworths, 2004