Passionate about technology

Behind the Enemy Lines: 28C3: Technical vs Social

BecHa — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:07:00 GMT

For my technically-minded friends, here are links and notes to the significant presentations and workshops I attended at CCC, December 2011. More social aspects of the whole experience are in my other post .

Alternative networks

Just after the midnight between the Days 1 & 2 was the workshop on Free Network Architectures , which for now means Mash Networks, GNUnet, and other forms of "darknet" (there's a good article about it here. The best thing was to see all the people involved in these activities; main point was that these kind of networks require users that are not feeling like consumers, but users that are participants, and take responsibility for their own "node" in the network. Follow-up: two events were announced: Wireless BattleMash in Athens, in March, and "International Summit for Community Wireless Networks" in Barcelona in September. (links?). Theory: Autonomous_Internet_Road_Map

The biggest "mainstream" talk on alternative networks was, of course, about Tor, by Jacob Apelbaum & Roger. They got a standing ovation, for saying things like "We have lived the entire course of human history without total surveillance state - we don't need one now". It was impressive, provocative & engaging. ( description& video: "How governments have tried to block Tor").

Applied security

Next best thing was p2p-sec workshop, on securing BGP in decentralized way. There were 10 of us, some people from TechInc, and some newcomers, from the Free Networks "movement". There was a momentum to continue cooperation, but now, after a month, I see that the progress is slow. In the meantime, the new IETF list was created: "therightkey".

Very important for me was also the talk by Peter Eckersley from EFF on " Sovereign Keys: A proposal for fixing attacks on CAs and DNSSEC" description& the video. After his talk I tried to make him interested in applying his theoretical solution to BGP, and if I'm lucky he will :) (his suggestions are already discussed on "therightkey" anyway...)

I also went to "CAcert" workshop, since with RPKI we (NCC) will become a CA, so I asked the workshop leader to take part in the RIPE lists & other community efforts to make sure we do not repeat their already known mistakes.

Measurements

I did pay attention also to topics related to my actual job: measurements of Internet performance & data visualization. One of the relevant talks was from Ruben & Chris: Choke Point Project. I have invited them to take part in RIPE community, we'll see what develops from that.

I also found very interesting the NOC report by Will & Kai (also from the RIPE community & HXX community) (see video. They showed the Network Monitoring tool with a SUPER COOL Dashboard!! (code from GitHub). They also mentioned ring.nlnog.net; icinga, that uses IRC alarms; & via Sylvan I've met Stefan from Tranalyzer project (flow based traffic analyzer).

Talks I've Missed but I wish I saw

Evgeny Morozov - Marriage from Hell , Building a Distributed Satellite Ground Station Network And also: Social Swarm , Counterlobying EU institutions, Your Disaster/Crisis/Revolution just got Pwned (Telecomix and Geeks without Bounds on Security and Crisis Response)
I wish I did not go to see Dan Kaminski , since he gave the same talk as on the summer CCC; however, his Net Neutrality Rooter (Nooter) is still interesting as a concept. Any "Running Code"?

For everything else that I've missed, here is a brilliant alternative overview: reluctant blogger: 5 small articles, hilarious and very to the point, by Dmytri Kleiner, Venture Communist from telekommunisten.net.

Selected quotes:

"You can not claim that you got your user's informed consent if you lie to them", Jakob (so poly! :)))
"We choose the world that we live in. We must reject "lawful interception" and surveillance ! " Jakob:
Poster/picture: "[Lolcat] I can has Freedom? TorProject.org"
"When we moved from infinitely terrible to infinitely terrible minus a little bit: that's progress", Wes Fabler (Hell Yeah, It is Rocket Science)
"Does Hacktivism Matter?" (Nothing Really Matress ;-) )
"Canadians are relatively mild", RedBeard in the talk about Dragnets
"We live in the world in which we make mistakes or misjudge the consequences... ", Cory Doctorow

I like to think that "we choose the world that we live in", and that events like CCC are contributing to this realization, and making it possible to add my bit to the building the world where I choose to live in.

Tegenvallig

BecHa — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:17:00 GMT

At the hackerspace meeting tonight we/me came up with a new Dutch word: tegenvallig. The meaning is "unsuspectedly unfortunate", kind of opposite of "toevallig" (coincidental or fortuitously or by chance). There is quite a bit of irony on trying to define Dutch words using English (thanks, Amran!), but there you go...

This is a pledge to my Dutch speaking friends and readers of the blog: please come up with some usage examples in sentences, so that the spiffy new word "tegenvallig" will find its place in the next version of the Dutch dictionary!

Again, there is a contradiction in the goal to make the word with double negative connotation popular. Life is about paradoxes of this kind.

Please add your examples in the comments here, or on Facebook, or on email, or on stone carving... Thank you!

An example you should not follow, because mixes English & Dutch again, is: "Life is full of surprises, some pleasant, some tegenvallig".

Behind the Enemy Lines: 28C3: Social vs Technical

BecHa — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:39:00 GMT

On 31st December I arrived back from Berlin, where I attended for the second time this year a CCC event: Chaos Computer Club hackers conference (first one being on the camping-site a.k.a. defunct East-German airport cum open-air museum, last summer). Altho I was on all (but one) summer events since '99, Dutch & German, this was my first time on the winter "congress": the timing between Xmas & New Year is almost always inconvenient, but this year it was well worth all the effort!

Getting there

Preparations started in September: I submitted two proposals for talks, together with CK; I had to make very good arrangements about children, since they were to be on school holidays, and there was Xmas to consider, which I was planning to spend in Madrid. And then booking the vacation days, looking for accommodation... In the meantime, my presentations/talks were refused, in-spite all the "connections" I've pulled, and in-spite all the hard work me and my co-author put into polishing our proposal! Regardless, I booked the flight, scheduled one day after coming back from Madrid, and returning to A'dam just in time for NYE, that I wanted to spend with my children.
The hunt for the entrance tickets was exciting and long, I only got mine "with a little help from my friend" Miguel from CCC.ch, but afterwards had one or two extra tickets offered, and distributed from friends-of-friends to my friends... (which ties nicely to the F2F economy topic! I love it!). The accommodation also worked out fine: after asking everyone I knew in Berlin, it was a friend from hackerspace A'dam who offered to share his room with me, which I was very happy to accept!

My goals for the congress were: to follow all the lectures, to meet all the people and to do some work on the side too! Well, that did not happen. What I did achieve in the end was to go to just a few lectures and workshops, talk a little bit to many people and a lot with a few, not get enough rest and have HUGE amounts of fun and new ideas! I did no work, except for collecting some contacts and case-studies about measurements applications -- but I did promote Technologia Incognita, our new yet-to-be-open hackerspace in Amsterdam!

I will list all the technical details of technical talks in another post, and link it here.

Highlights of talks with stress on social aspects

1) Absolutely first place goes to "History of Plutocracy" ( description, video) and the subsequent workshop on Friend2friend economy, and the "end of money". I was impressed with the topic, the summary of human civilization in 20 minutes, and the ideas on how to make the move to the better system and better world. Complete utopia - just the way I like it ;-) (one example is described in "Dispossessed", a book by Ursula LeGuin that I adore). And of course, Robin is my new guru ;-)

The whole concept is based on the belief that human nature is more altruistic then greedy, and that we can build a new value system based on reputation, exchange of favors, community, "global village" due to all of us being connected via Internet, cooperation as opposed to competition, and that we all can describe our own currency and/or use "time" as one of the measurements of the value of the "favor". The computer-part of the system would have to be based on decentralization, openness, peer-to-peer architectures... Of course, there are many challenges, the least of them building technical system to support this idea! Still, if you are intrigued, join Robin and us on altruists.org

2) Very interesting and relevant for me (as a Dutch-women) was a presentation by Brenno de Winter, investigative journalist in IT, ICT, and technology in general, in Holland ( description). He talked about his own hack of OV-chipcard (Dutch public transport system RFID card), revealing one-leak-a-day in October (LeakTober), and SSL fiasco: Diginotar, Gemnet, and consequences (go to 17' 30" on the Video).

3) And, of course, Cory Doctorow. Relevant, visionary, critical, well delivered, worth every minute of your time to watch it - or read it: transcript, blog post or video.

Relaxation

There was a sauna in the hotel: very relaxing, even if it is quite a small one and only of the Nordic type. It was free for hotel guests, and that's how I started the Day 2 (and solved part of the problem of showering in the shared room with transparent bathroom doors ;-)

Food was excellent: we mostly ate Japanese and Vietnamese, apart from me having frequent surges of wurst-crave ;-) I tried the "bubble-tea" for the first time (thanks, A, for introducing me to it)! And of course, "monh-kuchen"... every day... and some to bring home...

We rounded up the whole experience by visiting Liquidrom on the last day (with HfH & Tor crowd). It was very energising, relaxing, inspiring and exciting! Apart from regular saunas, steam rooms and outdoor hot tub, there was an amazing darkened dome with a warm swimming pool, with salty water and floating devices to help you ... float. AND underwater music!!! Surprising and sensual - for all the senses! Perfect ending for the perfect event!

Concensus & "kids"

BecHa — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:22:00 GMT

I am just back from CCC, where I got reminded of the cyber-libertarianism... And I bought a book, "Barefoot in Cyberspace". There's a quote there I find extremely relevant for me nowadays:

The youth caucus proposed taking the money to build another conference centre 
that could be run more sustainably. [...] But when the youth caucus submitted 
their proposal to the Grindstone Co-op adults, it was met with a cold scepticism 
Cory finds hard to bear even now.

“Grindstone had been started by Quakers who ran everything on a consensus basis,” says Cory, 
“But you can’t incorporate a consensus organisation. The by-laws had to have a basis 
for overcoming deadlocks. And so we had one – it was a majority vote of shares – but 
we had never really used it before.” It was this system that was used to decide the issue, 
and the youth caucus lost out. “It just flew in the face of the history of consensus,” Cory laments.

Although the youth wing received some of the grant money, which kept them going 
for a few more years, they eventually petered out. Cory is less than circumspect. 
“We might have petered out anyway but that was a real kind of angry activist split 
in my life where I felt like these people, who had said to us: ‘Our mission is 
to turn you into our successors and we recognise that young people have the capacity
 to do anything in the world,’ had then said: ‘Actually, that was just bullshit. 
Young people can’t really do anything, you know. Young people are just kids. 
You guys are just kids.’”

http://barefootintocyberspace.com/book/hypertext/

IPv6 in the popular literature (part 2)

BecHa — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:39:00 GMT

There is a new data-analysis toy called Google Books Ngram Viewer. "When you enter 2 or 3 phrases, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years."
I played with it, and compared mentions of IPv4 and IPv6. Surprisingly (?!), phrase IPv6 is mentioned more!!

Conclusions? People talk about IPv6, since it needs pushing and promoting; people take IPv4 for granted, since it is already everywhere, but underlying and therefore not noticed.

IPv6 in the popular literature (part 1)

BecHa — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:44:00 GMT

While reading the one of the "legal thriller" books during vacation, I came across the mention of IPv6!! It was listed as one of the features of the "smartphone" that the main character was using... ("Ankyo 850 PC Pocket Smartphone" with "IPv4 and IPv6 dual stack support"). And it was published in 2005!
The book is "The Broker" by John Grisham.
Here is the picture of the pages, with the IPv6 highlighted...

So, I guess this is the proof that IPv6 as a technology is already deployed... oh, wait, did I mention that this is a work of fiction? ;-)
Stay tuned...

Barcelona and other delightful NCC things!

BecHa — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:36:00 GMT

I just got back from Barcelona -- what a vacation! I did go there to work, but I was able to stay the weekend and see friends, get burned by the surprisingly strong Sun, skate along the beach -- and swim in the sea!

Oh, it was wonderful: cold water that chilled but invigorated me, the waves that made me feel lighter then I am, sparking light on the send glued to my skin... and all the other nude hippies on the Mar Bella beach :)

On Friday, 2nd April me and Angel went to the concert of New Cool Collective (NCC!) in Paradiso.
They are a true "big band" -- there were at least 20 people on the stage at any time! Most of them blowing: trumpets, saxophones, trombones... And wild percussions! It was wonderful! I danced myself crazy!
New Cool Collective

On 1st of April we went to the Book Chicago improvisation comedy show: Upgrade or Die!, about communication technology. Very appropriate for the (RIPE) NCC company outing ;-)

Hacking at Random - HAR2009

BecHa — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:53:00 GMT

The history repeats itself... every 4 years, to be precise ;-)

After Hacking In Progress '97, Hacking At Large 2001, What The Hack 2005 9and few CCCs in between), it's time for yet another hackers camping event: Hacking at Random.

It is again a brilliant, beautiful happening, full of smart people, inspiring lectures, old friends, new ideas, nature and Internet - a perfect combination!

Angel and me are staying in the tent in the Family Village, altho we came without children.

I gave a talk yesterday about: IPv6. It was good, but I'm happy it's over. I also got a T-shirt from Marco from xs4all (photo credits: Ruben)

My first IETF meeting is almost over...

BecHa — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:40:00 GMT

Today is the last day of the IETF meeting for me - but not the end of my visit to Stockholm! I'll be giving a course tomorrow, then sight-seeing with Angel in the weekend.

The meeting itself was great - very well organised, with plenty and good social events, good wireless connectivity, large venue, sound & presentations equipment professional, good position among restaurants for choosing lunch; huge participation, interesting presentations...

I met lots of people that also come to the RIPE meetings, and I got to know few new one. I got a lot of new ideas - I can only hope I will have time to make something of them. And if I'm very good and very quick with it, maybe I get sent to the next one - in Hiroshima!

www.ietf75.se

Proud to be the first female XS4ALL customer using IPv6

BecHa — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:47:00 GMT

For a year now I've been very enthusiastic about IPv6, and often frustrated with the lack of deployment and support for it around me.

The interest that I have in IPv6 borders on obsession: I see it as a crusade. Of course, my balanced personality makes it impossible to go for it 100%, so I also do other things in life... and that slowed down my progress in advocating and adopting IPv6 myself.

I've been giving several talks all over the place in order to promote and inform about IPv6 (as part of my work, but also because I've ben pushing for it):

in Bern, in October 2008, on the Swiss Network Operators Group #17 ;
in Belgrade, in November 2008, on the TELFOR conference
in Ede, on the "2001:: Space Odyssey", January 2009, where I got the hoody with "IPv6 Guru" written on it; there is a video of me giving a talk available (must scroll down the page very much...);

and soon:

at ES NOG in Madrid 11th May
CCC SIGINT in Cologne 23rd May
and on HAR2009 in August.

I also started a project called, in my words, "IPv6 catapult", inside my company, but it was tamed and organized and streamlined since. Probably got more result, but lost a bit on the passion side.

And, finally, I approached someone-that-I-know within Xs4all, shamelessly mixing private and professional connections, and told him I'm interested in testing IPv6 at home, as an End User. I got lucky -- they were just setting up the test-bed, and I jumped in (figuratively speaking ;-)

So, on Tuesday, 5-5-09, in the middle of the RIPE meeting, I picked up my brand-new modem (Fritz.box 7272 with a special beta-relase upgrade) that was shipped to me (to the office address); I installed it on Wednesday evening, and by Thursday afternoon IPv6 was up and running!

Marco announced on the RIPE meeting on Tuesday that they now have the first paying customer on IPv6 - and that was Olaf. I do not like being "second" or "number two", I prefer thinking of myself as the first female native-IPv6 user.

So now I must make some new geeky T-shirts, with these slogans:

Alexlh: "At this moment, 50% of xs4all's IPv6 customers are female"
Marco: "All this, and native IPv6"