Category: Talk

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Hack Challenge Redo (part3)

We had a small break with our hacking challenges Redo. The format of the Meetup required a change, to accommodate for less experienced visitors. And as much as I love the SANS Institute Challenges, they tend to be quite a puzzle, especially later one. So for now, we are going to focus on couple other Hacking Challenges that are available online. And hopefully in December, when new 2022 SANS Hack Challenge starts, we will have a group ready to battle it together 🙂

Let’s start from Over the Wire. There are plenty games there, we will start with the Bandit, as most suitable to get used to the platform. Bandit offers 33 levels to play, it teaches Linux commands and tools. In each level your goal is identical, find a password to the next level, but let’s start from the beginning.

Over the Wire artwork

To play Bandit you will need to establish SSH connection to the Over the Wire lab server, all details of connection are given in Level 0.

So, what is SSH?

Secure Shell, sometimes referred to as Secure Socket Shell, is a protocol which allows you to connect securely to a remote computer or a server by using a text-based interface. When a secure SSH connection is established, a shell session will be started, and you will be able to manipulate the server by typing commands within the client on your local computer. System and network administrators use this protocol the most, as well as anyone who needs to manage a computer remotely in a highly secure manner.

How to use SSH on Windows?

Most common ways of using SSH on Windows is by using one of the clients. Most popular clients are: PuTTY, BitwiseSSH and OpenSSH. Windows 10 users have now the option to use build-in OpenSSH client. Just follow the installation details of your choose client.

How to use SSH on Mac?

Mac’s have build-in Terminal feature, that provides SSH client.

How do we do it on Linux?

That shouldn’t be a problem for any regular Linux users, but in case you are just starting with Linux. Go to your terminal and type:

ssh

This should list all ssh details and commands. If that’s not the case, just use the following command to install OpenSSH:

sudo apt-get install openssh-client

Full list of common SSH flags can be found here.

This should get everyone started and ready for this week challenge 🙂

One more thing, you may need to use Vim and couple Linux commands.

See you @ 5-7pm today @ our dedicated Discord channel.

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June Live Stream

The summer is here and we have just scheduled a night of great talks to give you all sorts of inspiration. We hope to welcome you on Wednesday the 2nd of June from 7 pm streaming on our Youtube channel. We will have talks about CNC wood carver, the game of life on blockchain and the Irish Monopoly board to life on Wikipedia. The talks will be followed by a live Q&A. Check out the talks below.

Link To Live Stream

Talks

Talk Title: Building a portable Mostly-Printed CNC robotic wood carver
Project Description: Home-built CNC for Makerspace Workshops. I used the Prusa MK3S+ to print many of the parts for my new CNC machine. It has a usable carving volume of 470x300x60mm, and a 1.5kW water-cooled spindle. I am following the hackable design at V1Engineering.com called MPCNC – Primo.I have recently carved my first works of art with it and it exceeds my expectations with its speed and accuracy. I plan to bring it to makerspaces around Ireland to give CNC/CAD classes, as soon as it becomes feasible again.
Speaker: Prof. Steve M. Potter
Bio: Neuroengineer, teacher, writer, and maker. 
Links: Maker website: https://stevempotter.tech
Links: Research website: https://potterlab.gatech.edu
Links: https://twitter.com/stevempotter

Talk Title: The world’s most expensive version of Conway’s Game of Life
Project Description: An implementation of Conway’s Game of Life on the Ethereum Blockchain
Speaker: Niall Ó Cléirigh
Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallocleirigh/ 
Links: https://github.com/nialloc/GameOfLife

Talk Title: Bringing the Irish Monopoly board to life on Wikipedia
Project Description: In collaboration with other Wikipedia editors, and inspired by a similar project on the London Monopoly board, I have been working on the articles relating to the streets and places mentioned on the original 1973 Irish edition Monopoly board. Not only has it been the perfect lockdown project, but a great way to learn more about Dublin.
Speaker: Rebecca O’Neill
Bio: I am a crafter and general magpie who is the Project Coordinator for Wikimedia Community Ireland, the local affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. I also love museums, cats, books, architecture, art, and history – not necessarily in that order.
Links: www.wikimedia.ie
Links: https://twitter.com/restlesscurator
Links:  twitch.tv/Smirkybec
Link to the Monopoly board: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ritchie333/Irish_Monopoly

Our event will be hosted by our own CEO Jeffrey. On the team of festival makers for Dublin Maker, Council & Executive board member of Engineers Ireland.

Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.

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Arduino Day – Saturday 27th of March

Arduino Day is a worldwide birthday celebration of Arduino – organized directly by the community, or by the Arduino team. It brings people together “online” to share their experiences and learn more about the open-source platform.

We are hosting a 2 hour live stream with a mix of demos, introduction lessons and contributions from our community.

We will kick things off at 11 am on Saturday the 27th of March on our Youtube channel. The event will be unconference style. We have the topics already (listed below) and would like to open the event to hear from you our community to talk about your projects. Drop us an email to present your project.

  • Arduino 101 – Getting started – Declan Meenagh
  • Lorawan – Lower Powered communication – Jeffrey Roe
  • Hot Things – monitoring temperatures – Gary Cooke
  • Tree’s Projects twitter knitter/fabric cadaver/cycling distance vest. TriploidTree
  • Giant arduino development kit – Robert Fitzsimons⁩

You can rewatch the event below.

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Holiday Hack Challenge Redo (part 2)

Hello Everyone, we are about to join in ranks to battle the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge tasks again, today on dedicated Discord server. Please use the Meetup page for more details, ongoing announcements.

This post will summaries last Meetup progress and provides clues for further steps.

Let’s start we the recap. We started with:

12 years of TOG – a perfect time to do some hacking 🙂

Followed shortly by:

12 years of TOG – Holiday Hack Challenge Redo (part 1)

On the 23rd of January Meetup we have completed following tasks:

  • Objective 1 – Uncover Santa’s Gift List – clues in blog post video above
  • Objective 2a – Kringle Kiosk – clues in blog post video above
  • Objective 2b – S3 bucket – clues give at a Discord were: update the wordlist and add the searched bucket name, use ‘cat’ command to inspect the bucket. Copy and inspect in CyberChef the file. Start unpacking and remember to pipe the output whenever needed.
  • Objective 3a – Linux Primer – no clues were needed 🙂
  • Objective 3b – Point-of-Sale Password Recovery – clues give at a Discord were: download the package, no need to install the shop. Unpack the exe file, and poke around until you find app.asar and use 7zip to open Asar file.

Later today, 5-7pm GMT we will be focusing on following tasks:

  • all unfinished past tasks
  • Objective 4a – Unescape Tmux – no help needed
  • Objective 4b – Santavator operations – no help needed
  • Objective 5a – Speaker UNPrep – first clue: ‘strings door’ with some filters, more clues @Discord
  • Objective 5b – 5b: 33 Gkbps – no help needed
  • Objective 5c – Open the HID lock in the Workshop – no help needed
  • Objective 6a – Regex Toy Sorting – we will battle it together @Discord
  • Objective 6b – Splunk Challenge – clue: look for Bro.

See you later at Discord.

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February Live Stream

We are back and hosting a new live stream on Tuesday the 9 th of February from 7 pm. Tune into our Youtube channel to see makers showcase their projects in short 15-minute talks followed by a live Q&A. Check out the projects below.

Link To Live Steam

Talks

printing press

Project Title: Conversion of Victorian Clothes Mangle to Printing press
Project Description: I’ll be talking through the process of converting a cast-Iron clothes mangle into a printing press for printing etchings, relief prints and letterpress. I’ll be giving a quick demo of my press in action and showing some work I’ve made on my press along and some experiments I’ve tried with 3D printed printing plates and some upgrades I’d like to make on the press in the future
Speaker: Louise Nolan.
Bio: I’m a multidisciplinary designer, artist and educator
Links: Twitter. Instagram, LinkedIn

Project Title: Handtooled leather bookmarks
Project Description: Join Crafty Nathan as he makes leather boom marks from scratch, hand-tooled dyed, stained and sealed. All the simple steps in making a leather product. This talk will be great for beginners who want to start in the hobby or just a fun project to enjoy!
Speaker: Nathan Wheeler.
Links: linktr.ee

Project Title: Fail it till you make it.
Project Description: A wander around the idea of failure and our occasionally poor relationship with it, from the perspective of a wood turner.
Bio: Tom Murphy is an occasional wood turner. He has competed and won several awards nationally and locally. His tear cure cancer and he writes his own bios.
Speaker: Tom Murphy
Links: Twitter

Our event will be hosted by our own CEO Jeffrey. Be sure to put any questions you have for our speakers in the Youtube chat.

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12 years of TOG – Holiday Hack Challenge Redo (part 1)

So, as promised we are going to start SANS Holiday Hack Challenge Redo run by Counter Hack Team. We will start with the latest 2020 challenge . You will need a valid email to create user account, which is instant. You can start straight away on your own or watch a couple helpful videos.

The first video that I would like talk about, it’s Ed Skoudis 2020 Hack Challenge Intro. Video is a great overview of this year challenge.

Second video is aimed at Hack Challenge first timers, it’s walk through the login page and the starting interface.

And don’t forget to join discussion later today at a dedicated Discord Channel https://discord.gg/MqCQkSzG. We start at 5pm today 🙂

This month we are going to focus on 2 objectives.

To help with starting the first objective you can watch this video:

Or read this article with helpful techniques. The online photo editor can be found here.

Watch the video below for the start of the second objective overview:

See you at Discord after 5pm GMT today, we will try to finish Objectives 1 &2 together.