Having received no objections to the idea of moving
the monthly ALE Central meetings to the Third Thursday
of each month, the new schedule is being implemented
beginning this month.
The first ALE Central meeting of 2008 will be held
THURSDAY, JANUARY 17th, 7:30 pm at our usual
Emory Law School, Gambrel Hall, rm 1C venue.
The main presentation will be a close up look at
the One Laptop Per Child portable solid state Linux
computer. Charles Shapiro and Mike Harrison were
among the bleeding edge adopters and will be sharing
their hacking attempts and explorations of the device
to date.
Complete synopsis and bio details to follow soon.
To accommodate Emory Law School’s room scheduling at
our donated venue we have moved our December 2007
Central meeting date up by 1 week. Instead of the second
Thursday, this month’s ALE Central meeting will be held
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6 at 7:30 pm.,
and our feature presentation for the evening will be
Using Snort To Sniff Out Content-Based Network Attacks
presented by Bob Toxen
Synopsis:
— Snort is the free Open Source tool of choice for spotting and blocking
attacks hiding in normal network traffic (IDS and Intrusion Prevention).
It is good at recognizing content-based attacks aimed at allowed services
and hiding in browser and mail traffic to your client systems as well
as simpler port-based attacks. This presentation will cover basic
installation and use so that you can take advantage of this excellent
tool.
Bio:
— Mr. Bob Toxen, one ALE’s founding members, is the author of Real World
Linux Security [Second Edition, 848pp published by Prentice Hall PTR].
He is a world-class expert on Linux and UNIX security and mixed-OS network
security using Linux. His 30+years of UNIX/Linux experience includes being
one of the 162 developers of Berkeley UNIX and being one of the four creators
of Silicon Graphics’ UNIX.
— Mr. Toxen’s consulting focuses on network and computer security using
low cost Linux solutions for virus and spam filters, hardening Linux servers,
firewalls, VPNs, and more.
============================
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found
HERE (or via the side bar link).
Our feature presentation for the
Thursday, November 8, 2007
ALE Central Meeting will be
Extreme Practical Data Recovery
presented by Michael Warfield
Synopsis:
— It’s happened to so many of us. What we dread has come to happen. A
drive has gone bad and precious data is now beyond our reach. A
controller reports drive errors and commands are failing, or worse.
Then we are reminded of all those resolves to do backups. All too late.
But all is not lost. Even with a failed drive, often the vast majority
of the data can be recovered. But drive recovery specialists are
expensive and it’s easy to make a mistake that looses even more data.
This talk will look at some data recovery technique to maximize your
chance of recovering the most data from a failing or failed drive and
knowing when you’ve gotten all you can, while minimizing the chances of
making things worse or wasting time, money, and effort on a failed
cause.
Bio:
— Michael Warfield is a Senior Researcher and Analyst for the X-Force
Managed Security Services of IBM Internet Security Systems.
— With computer security experience dating back to the early 1970s and
Unix experience dating back to the early 1980s, Mike is responsible for
doing research into security vulnerabilities and intrusion protection
techniques for IBM-ISS X-Force.
— Prior to joining ISS, now IBM-ISS, Mike has held positions such as, a
Unix systems engineer, Unix consultant, security consultant and network
administrator on the Internet. He is one of the resident Unix gurus at
the Atlanta UNIX Users Group and is one of the founding members of the
Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts. He is also an active member of the Samba
development team and is a contributor to the Linux Kernel and numerous
Open Source Software projects. Mike has published articles on both
Samba and on Security and is a respected cryptographer in the Open
Source community.
(-: ed note: Michael’s career info is a five time winner of
ALE’s “Most Intimidating Member Bio” award. :-)
============================
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found
HERE (or via the side bar link).
As part of ALE’s recognition of the scheduled October 19th release
of Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy” and in consideration of the upcoming
Ubuntu GA / ALE Install Fest set for November 10th, our monthly
ALE Central Meeting on Thursday, October 11, 2007 will be:
“Planning the Future of Ubuntu Server”
presented by Rick Clark
Ubuntu Server Team Manager,
Canonical, Ltd
Synopsis:
This presentation will provide an overview of the current and potential
directions for the Server Edition distribution of Ubuntu Linux. The talk
will address the new features found in Ubuntu Server 7.10, plus look
at some of the tentative plans for development of the 8.04 release.
Discussions will also include details of the strategic partnerships that
Canonical has entered into, with a special focus on the Vmware
components. The Ubuntu Server team is also very interested in
learning what features ALE members would like to see in their
professional Server OS, so open discussion will be encouraged.
Bio:
Rick Clark has complete engineering responsibility for the Ubuntu Server
Edition as manager of the Ubuntu Server Team for Canonical Ltd, the
company behind Ubuntu Linux. Prior to his involvement with Ubuntu, Rick
worked in various system and security architecture roles for large financial
institutions and pharmaceutical companies. In the 1990’s, Rick owned and
operated an ISP in Gainesville, Florida. In 1995 he helped with the creation
of linuxnewbie.org, and a few years later founded linuxiso.org.
Links:
Ubuntu Server Info
Ubuntu-US-GA
Our ALE Central Meeting presentation for
Thursday, September 13th, 7:30pm will be:
“An Intro to Web Application Design
with Django”
presented by Ben Chapman, Emory Law School
with Chris Heisel, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Ben Chapman, head of information technology for Emory Law School,
will introduce us to Django from the perspective of an intermediate-level
programmer with a concrete business problem to solve. Chris Heisel helps
manage web services for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and will be
offering an additional view of Django development from a large scale
enterprise angle, while lamenting the challenge of recruiting good, web
savvy, Python programmers who understand the Open Source model.
[hint, hint]
Django itself is a BSD license Open Source project providing a “high-level
Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean,
pragmatic design.” The introduction will give a quick overview of what
Django development is like, using as its example the creation of a
classroom “dashboard” system for faculty and staff that allows them to get a
quick overview of class rosters and allows them to contact students and
perform other classroom-related tasks. Tools used will be Django, Python,
MySQL, and Apache, all running on a Centos 4.5 box.
For more background on Django, please see the
Django Project Home Page.
============================
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School are at the
Central Meeting link on the side bar.
ROOM NOTE:
We should be back in our regular meeting
space, bottom floor lecture room 1c.