With more and more information coming out about how insecure nearly
every computer is, come find out how to make your computer use just a
bit more secure…
In this presentation, Robert will go over how to setup and use a Yubikey
to store PGP keys and PKI certs such that without physical access theft
of the keys is just about impossible, and even difficult with physical access.
Other security enhancements like hardware password stores (Mooltipass)
and air-gapped machines will be covered. Further, I’m sure there will be
discussion of the recently disclosed Meltdown and Specter attacks.
Chromebooks and Chromeboxes are cheap, easy to use, and pretty secure; but after a while the shortcomings of Chrome OS get annoying and I want my Linux.
Crouton is a script which installs Debian, Kali, or Ubuntu Linux into a chroot container that runs under Chrome OS.
It’s easy to install, and it works great.
You’ve probably heard of the mythical “Year of the Linux Desktop” for quite some time by now with the year seemingly always just around the corner. With Linux just now crossing the 3% install base threshold we may not be “there” yet but that’s not to say there aren’t some great companies out there making Linux-specific hardware. Case in point is the topic of this talk - System76 (http://system76.com) ships laptops in a range of sizes and configurations with Linux preloaded.
In this talk, I’ll demonstrate a new System76 Oryx Pro laptop and show off the current Out-Of-Box experience as well as their plans for their own distribution named Pop!_OS which is now in development. I’ll talk about what works well with their current software loadout and areas that still need improvement. I’ll also give an overview of the current state of driver support and touch on how that support dictated the hardware build of the laptop. I’ll leave plenty of time at the end for everyone to get some hands-on time as some things (such as what the keyboard and button layout feels like) can’t be demonstrated well from a projector.
Lightning Talks:
Have something you would like to present, but don’t have enough material
for a full talk? Here’s your chance. Talk about anything Linux related.
Hackfest:
Bring your hardware to get help with it or just to show it off.
Have you ever wondered what is clogging your Internet connection? Or if
you ever use (or get) the bandwidth you pay for? The best way to know is
to measure.
This presentation will discuss how to retrieve data from sources ranging
from Linux hosts to network and IoT devices using collectd, then storing
and graphing the data using InfluxDB and Grafana. The intended audience
is technically-inclined home users and system administrators.
Lightning Talks:
Have something you would like to present, but don’t have enough material
for a full talk? Here’s your chance. Talk about anything Linux related.
Hackfest:
Bring your hardware to get help with it or just to show it off.
Most of what we’ve been told over the years about what makes a good
password has been wrong, so it’s no surprise most people pick bad
passwords. This talk will cover the history of password policy and password
cracking starting from the days when Richard Stallman hacked the passwords
forced on his MIT computer lab because he considered passwords an
authoritarian method of control. Next I’ll discuss the golden days of
password guessing featured prominently in movies like Hackers and WarGames.
Then I’ll move to the tech boom and the introduction of draconian IT
policies like password rotation and password complexity and the dirty
little leet-speak password secrets they led to. As we get closer to the
modern day I’ll discuss the “correct horse battery staple” password
renaissance and more modern approaches to password cracking spawned by
tools like oclhashcat and giant password databases dumps like the RockYou hack.
I’ll finish up with modern attempts to fix the password auth problem such
as new approaches to secure password generation in password managers or
schemes such as diceware as well as cover password auth reinforcements like
the different forms of 2FA (including U2F) and Facebook’s new approach to
“I forgot my password” workflows. By the end everyone should have plenty of
ammunition to take back to their IT department and get rid of those
horrible password policies.
Description: Let’s Encrypt is a way for anyone to enable TLS (as in, HTTPS) support to a webserver at no cost.
However, there are many security considerations involved with everything from certificate renewal to safe handling of the various files involved.
In this talk and live demo I’ll cover how to create a reverse proxy using the nginx webserver that simultaneously allows multiple webservers to exist at one IP address and show how isolating Let’s Encrypt to a different system increases security.
The talk will also cover more secure (and less risky) methods of automatic key renewal than the official, somewhat invasive renewal tool.
ContinuingLogo is a recently written interpreter for the Logo programming language that is still in pre-alpha.
It is mostly compatible with Brian Harvey’s UCBLogo interpreter and has some graphic and sound features inspired by Atari Logo for the Atari 800.
Logo was created at MIT and BBN in the late 1960s as a language to support children in learning mathematical and logical thinking.
Its most well known feature is turtle graphics, in which a “turtle” moves around on the screen as instructed, drawing a trail behind it.
This talk will consist of a brief tour of some of ContinuingLogo’s basic features, followed by demonstrations of several short example programs.
Language demos will include an incredibly short pig Latin translator.
Graphics demos will include spirals, fractals, line followers, and a traffic simulation.
Sound demos will include the generation of music and sound effects, and illustrations of the relationship between sound frequencies and perceived musical notes.
A few larger games will be demonstrated but not discussed line by line.
Working on an engineering project with more than one person is hard enough when everyone is in the same room.
It’s more difficult when you have a team spread around the world and even more interesting if you’re working on a shared physical device.
In this talk, I’ll discuss a remote engineering environment I created that allows contributors to connect to a standard Linux user account with a shared terminal (tmux), shared desktop (x2go with desktop sharing enabled), power and data control for a device under test (serial over USB), and even streaming video for viewing camera feeds (RTMP streaming from OBS Studio and viewed in VLC).
This wide-ranging talk is appropriate for all levels of experience and will primarily be a series of live, remote demos.
Lightning Talks:
Have something you would like to present, but don’t have enough material
for a full talk? Here’s your chance. Talk about anything Linux related.
Elections:
After the last lightning talk concludes we will hold our annual elections.
Hackfest:
Bring your hardware or software project to get help with it or just to
show it off.
