Category: Talk

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Security Series: Wireless Security Workshop (again)

IT Security
Next Saturday I am going to re-run my Wireless Security Workshop. Last time I had 16 attendees all busy hacking away at the different wireless access points I set up.

This is a hands on workshop. It is aimed at beginners and you will be following along with what I do on my screen on the projector.

I will cover:
* What wireless is
* Different security settings
* The insecurities of each
* Live demo’s of Open Wireless, WEP, WPA.
* Discussion of WPS

The duration of the class will be 4 hours with a small break in the middle. For the class you will be required to bring your own laptop with either airtools installed, a virtual machine with Backtrack running, or booting into Backtrack via USB/DVD.

This will be the final security course that I run free of charge. In future I will charge a fee that will go towards the running of TOG.

Date: 28th April 2012
Time: 1pm – 5pm
Seats are limited to 16

SOLD OUT – Please add yourself to the waiting list and I will let you know this evening if a place becomes free

Continue reading “Security Series: Wireless Security Workshop (again)”

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Intro to Mailing Lists

I’m sure you’ve come across mailing lists before; a service to which you subscribe, and when someone posts to the list you get the email. TOG has a public mailing list, that strictly speaking operates as a discussion list. Anyone subscribed can post to the list, on-topic discussion is encouraged, and you will get more than just anouncements.

The Mailman GNU logoTo join our mailing list simply go to http://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog, enter your email address, and press the “Subscribe” button. A confirmation email will be sent to the address you entered, to which you can either reply, or click the link included. You will then receive a Welcome email, with info like links for subscription info, passwords, etc. It’s a good idea to keep this email around.

Perhaps the only real choice you need to make is whether or not you would like to receive list mail in daily digest format.
Pro; seperate emails will be bundled together and sent as one mail, therefore you will have less emails in your inbox.
Con; seperate emails will be bundled together and sent as one mail, meaning you might not see the discussion until after it’s over, and you will have difficulty replying to individual emails (quite a bit copy-pasting is involved).

If you plan to lurk and only ever read, and don’t mind being a bit behind the times, then digest-mode might be for you. For everyone else we recommend selecting “No” when asked if you’d like to receive the daily digest. It will make your life a lot easier, promise.

There are other tricks and techniques to making surviving a mailing-list easier, but many come down to your actual mail-client itself. For instance, if offered, use labels, filters, folders, anything to sort the mail automatically without you having to do anything. That way you can leave the mail sitting in your inbox (or other folder) until you’re ready to deal with it.

And remember, the tog public mailing list is archived. To browse the archives go to http://lists.tog.ie/pipermail/tog/, and browse month-by-month, sorted by Thread, Subject, Author, or Date. If browsing isn’t for you and you’d like to search the archives, it’s time to employ some google-fu;

Go to www.google.ie and enter;
site:lists.tog.ie inurl:/pipermail/tog/ WHATYOUWANTTOSEARCHFORHERE
e.g. to search for “open social”, then do a google search for
site:lists.tog.ie inurl:/pipermail/tog/ open social

There you go, that should be enough to get you started! Just one other thing; don’t forget your manners, and try to follow good netiquette.

Welcome to the mailing list.

(And remember, you can always unsubscribe! Bottom of page here. A few simple clicks can take the pain away 🙂

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Intro to IRC

One of the primary ways tog members (and non-members) interact when not in the space is over irc. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and is an old text-based way to chat online.

TOG has a channel (#tog) on freenode.net, which is free to use. To connect you can download a client (like Pidgin), or just use the webchat interface from your browser. But we like to make things easy for people, so on our Contact page you’ll find the webchat interface, but pre-filled in to connect to the #tog channel. All you have to do is fill in the reCaptcha and hit connect.

You’ll see that we have generated a nickname for you, but you are welcome to change it to any nickname (that isn’t currently in use or registered to someone else). If you do try to use a nickname that’s in use you’ll get this message;
== Nickname is already in use: popularNickName
And it will be changed, perhaps by appending an underscore to the end, e.g. popularNickName_

If the name is already registered (aka claimed) by someone else, you will get a message like this;
== This nickname is registered. Please choose a different nickname, or identify via /msg NickServ identify password.
(If it is your nickname, then you can ‘sign in’ by typing /msg nickserv identify yourpassword)

Once in the room, you can still change your nickname with /nick newNickName

You will notice two tabs at the top of the webchat window, one called ‘Status’ and one called ‘tog’. Any additional rooms you enter, or private chats you start, will open in new tabs. Under ‘tog’ you will see the message;
== TOGvisitor1 [1a2b3c4e@gateway/web/freenode/ip.x.x.x.x] has joined #tog

From here it’s very simple. You type into the text-entry-box at the bottom of the tog tab, and press enter to send it to the room. If you type someones name, your message will be highlighted (usually in red) for them. Some clients also send notifications, but not all. You will see this in action when someone writes your nickname.

If you click on someones nickname from the list on the right, you will get two options; whois and query. whois brings up info like ip-address, servers, name, etc, most of which is rarely accurate. query will start a private chat with that person.

If you can’t quite find the words, but could like to describe an action there is /me, for example, /me waves hello becomes;
* TOGvisitor1 waves hello

Then, when you tire of all this chatting, you can leave the room with /part, and disconnect from IRC with /quit. Then just close the browser.

There are many irc guides and commands around that a search engine can help you find, or you can use this helpful guide.

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Engineers Week Talks

TOG will be hosting a night of short talks as part of engineers week on Thursday 1st of March . Each talk will be twenty minutes long on a range of interesting topics. The space will open from 18.30 with the talks starting at 19.15. The event is free and open to all.

Talk 1

Title: PRESENTING WITH EFFECT


Blurb: Not effects, e-f-f-e-c-t. If your presentation doesn’t have an effect, why do it? Rowan will delve into the elements that will raise your talk from the level of background noise, get audiences to pay attention, and ultimately, get them to take action as a result of your talk. Presenting can be powerful and effective if you give a little extra thought in advance. Rowan will show you where to focus your efforts to best effect.

Speaker

BIO
Presentation skills demon, PowerPoint nerd, wordsmith, storyteller, speaker, trainer, and dancing bear.

Talk 2

Title: Data erasure for the security conscious and the overly paranoid pervert.



Blurb: Lets discuss some of the commonly used methods of data erasure and

why they might just be overkill due to the limitations of modern forensic investigation tools.
Will include a couple of live demos of file deletion and recovery (or lack there of).

Speaker

BIO
Kevin is a full time student studying computer forensics and security at Waterford institute of Technology. He founded the WIT Hackers Society in Jan2011 and was involved in the organisation of the CampusCon hacker conference. He loves hacking, forensics & networking.

Talk 3

Title: Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – “keeping it real”.


Blurb: We live in exponentially changing times. This talk sets out to showcase why CPD is so important.
Dismissing the ‘turgid’ HR type definition of CPD for a more verbose real life CPD.
The talk will explains the different stages of CPD though a person career.

Speaker

BIO
Chartered Engineer Joe Fitzpatrick, BE CEng FIEI, is the Program Director
for Industry Solutions Development with IBM Software Group in Ireland.

Talk 4

Title: Broadcast Yourself, without the Internet – An Introduction to Amateur Television and how to start your own TV station


Blurb: We have all heard of CB radio where anyone can talk to anyone without the internet. A step up from that is Amateur Television where anyone can start broadcasting television and others pick up the picture.

Speaker

Daniel Cussen
BIO
Daniel Cussen an Electronic Engineer will explain what’s needed to get involved, and how Dublin-wide coverage of his TV system was recently achieved. A little bit of electronics wizardry, a video camera and a TV is all that is needed


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Dublin Unity3D Development Discussion

Unity is a fantastic tool/engine for game development, but what’s not obvious when developing it is the best methods for developing the game code.

Coming from a programming background, Unity can be quiet confusing. The idea of attaching components to objects in order to add functionality is easy to grasp and makes creating small games fast any easy, but what about larger and more complex games?

The Dublin Unity3D Development Discussion is an event where attendees will get the opportunity to do a talk on the development methods (including, if they wish, the project management techniques/software that they use) and design patterns that they use to develop games. These presentations can take any form and involve any kind of media (a game, code examples, slides, handouts). Those giving talks are welcome to demonstrate their game(s), whatever state they are in.

Doing a presentation/talk is completely optional. They are also informal, there’s no list to sign up to, just come along with any material/media you’d like to use (if any).

After the presentations there will be a discussion on development in Unity.

Some of the things we’ll be discussing are:

  • Using design patterns in Unity to structure code:
    • Singleton – For instantiating a single Scene Manager
    • State – For GameStates which encapsulate logic/code for each scene
    • Observer – Having components/classes subscribe to event notices
    • Object Pool – Limiting instantiations of GameObjects to reduce garbage collection (improve performance)
    • Adapter/Wrapper – Used for integrating Jitter Physics and maybe managing GameObjects
  • Project management (in relation to managing issues and code)

 

Everyone’s welcome to attend, however the topics covered will require some understanding of C# (or a similar language).

Date: 26th January

Time: 18.30

Signup page

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Campuscon

Event not in TOG.

CampusCon 2012 is the inaugural information security conference hosted by the WIT Hacking Societyand Waterford 2600 members. It will run on Saturday the 21st of January, on the WIT Sports Campus, on the outskirts of Waterford City.

The event will host a number of speakers, covering an array of topics – from web-application security to infosec philosophy. CampusCon will also host a team-based hacking challenge, where everything is to play for and the winners earn bragging rights over their peers. The event will be hotly contested, with teams from various security groups and universities taking part. We will also host a video game challenge. Of course, no conference is complete without a social aspect – so in the tradition of Irish spirit, there will be beers after the event.

Entry to the event is only €5, which covers entry and refreshments. Doors for the event open at 9am, with the first talk at 10am.

One of our members will be giving a talk on Hackerspaces at the event to try and get Ireland’s next hackerspace to be in Waterford.