Phillip Hallam-Baker


Phillip Hallam-Baker is a computer scientist, mostly known for contributions to Internet security, since the design of HTTP at CERN in 1992. Self-employed since 2018 as a consultant and expert witness in court cases, he previously worked at Comodo, Verisign, and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is a frequent participant in IETF meetings and discussions, and has written a number of RFCs.
He introduced the misspelling of referrer in the original proposal to incorporate the "Referer" header field into the HTTP specification. In 2007 he authored the dotCrime Manifesto: How to Stop Internet Crime; Ron Rivest used it as a source of project ideas for his course on Computer and Network Security at MIT in 2013.

Biography

Hallam-Baker has a degree in electronic engineering from the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton and a doctorate in Computer Science from the Nuclear Physics Department at Oxford University. He was appointed a Post Doctoral Research Associate at DESY in 1992 and CERN Fellow in 1993.
Hallam-Baker worked with the Clinton-Gore ’92 Internet campaign. While at the MIT Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence, he worked on developing a security plan and performed work on securing high-profile federal government internet sites.

IETF Contributions