Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Boston Linux and Unix InstallFest LXVIII Saturday October 6, 2018

Boston Linux Installfest LXVIII
When: Saturday October 6, 2018, from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm
Where: Morse Institute Library
Innovation Studio second floor
14 E. Central Street
Natick, MA 01760
Plenty of free parking in the city parking lot on South Ave
behind the library

Map:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse+Institute+Library/@42.28436,-71.345798,17z
/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e387ad9d0241a9:0x42dacd80cae8a42d


https://morseinstitute.org/studio/

The Innovation Studio is on the second floor of the library. The library
is a couple blocks' walk from the Natick Center MBTA commuter rail
station. From the station, head south down Washington Street, crossing
over South Avenue. You'll pass Dolphin Seafood on the right and
Agostinos on the left, then you'll pass Court Street on the right. The
library is the building to the left at the end of the road where
Washington meets East Central.

What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your
Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions.
In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special
expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance. Today, most
distros are using Live images that you can try out and then install.
This can be copied to DVDs or USB sticks.There are a number of USB
creators, such as UNetbootin (https://unetbootin.github.io/). Both
Fedora and Ubuntu have a USB creator built in.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are
welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system. While
Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and
hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web
pages for hardware compatibility. While we prefer you to bring your own
distros, our volunteers will normally have

Linux Howto Pages: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html
Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://tldp.org/docs.html#faq
Additionally, there are forums and listservs for most distros.

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and
Ubuntu distributions:
* Fedora - https://getfedora.org/ (Fedora 28 Live DVD/USB)
* Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com ( 18.04.1 LTS DVD/USB or 18.10 if it is
available)
* other distros can be downloaded at the Installfest

We generally have them on local drives and can burn CDs/DVDs and
USBs.Since there are many variants of these distros, we advise you to
bring an empty USB stick with sufficient memory to hold one of the
distros. Live images require about 1.5GB. I usually have some USBs
prepared or can easily burn a USB.

We usually have both a Wired and Wireless network available.


In addition, you can run Linux on your Windows PC through a virtual
machine manager, such as Virtualbox. You can install this in your
Windows machine and run Linux as a guest OS, or install it in your Linux
machine and run Windows as a guest. Oracle VirtualBox 5.2.18
(http://www.virtualbox.org.) is free and is available for Linux, Windows
10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Additionally,
there are also some VMWare clients that are also free for Windows.

Lunch is generously sponsored by Bluefin Technical Services, John Ross
and Ron Thibeau


Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further
information and directions.

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



























































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Announce mailing list
Announce@blu.org
http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Boston Linux Meeting reminder, tomorrow Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - Crypto News, plus our annual PGP/GnuPG Key-Signing Party

When: September 19, 2018 7:00PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Crypto News, plus our annual PGP/GnuPG Key-Signing Party
Moderator: Bill Ricker
Location: MIT Building E-51, Room 335


Please note that Wadsworth St is open from Memorial Drive to Amherst St,
but is closed between Amherst St to Main St. See the ling below for
additional details.
https://courbanize.com/projects/mit-kendall-square/updates

Summary:

Bill's annual crypto talk, PGP keysigning party. Register your key in
advance to participate!

Abstract:
Bill reviews recent crypto news from the past year, and some crypto history.

Cryptography News Highlights since the last year; e.g.,
top named vulnerabilities
preparing for post-Quantum cryptography
books on Eliz. S. Friedman released (wrto Hidden Figures)

The history portion may    include    horse farms, pumpkin patches, IBM
punch-card accounting, and catching atom spies; or the Hidden Figures
book connections; or something else entirely.

Following Bill's presentation, we hold our annual keysigning party.

------------------------ Additional information from Bill

* We will NO LONGER sign RSA or DSA 1024b keys (or shorter). Obsolete.
* We will NOT sign RSA 2048b keys without expiration dates
or with expiration dates beyond 2020.
* Use RSA 4096 or ed25519 for gpg2 --gen-key

Notes
* If concerned about well-capitalized massive factoring dictionaries,
subtract a small multiple of 8 bits to get a size that is not standard
and thus won't be dictionaried.
* Alas the one trustworthy ECC curve,  ed25519, is supported only in
GPG 2.1.7+ (gpg2), but if you have recent Ubuntu you you can use it now.
  See https://nickhu.co.uk/posts/2016-09-03-curvy-gpg/
<https://nickhu.co.uk/posts/2016-09-03-curvy-gpg/> for instructions  
GPG2 gives a warning that it's not yet standardized so i'm considering
it still somewhat expriemental ... i'm going to try a 10y expiring on this 


———————-

A key signing party is a get-together of people who use the PGP
encryption system with the purpose of allowing those people to sign each
others keys. Key signing parties serve to extend the web of trust to a
great degree. Key signing parties also serve as great opportunities to
discuss the political and social issues surrounding strong cryptography,
individual liberties, individual sovereignty, and even implementing
encryption technologies or perhaps future work on free encryption software.

The basic workflow of signing someone's key is as follows:

Verify that the person actually is who they claim to be;
Have them verify their key ID and fingerprint;
Sign their key;
Send the signed key back to them

At the meeting, we go through the first two steps. Each person who
preregistered their key will announce their presence and then read off
their key ID and fingerprint, so everyone can verify that their copy of
the list of keys is correct. Once we've run down the list, we line up,
and each of us examines everyone else's photo IDs to verify that they
are who they claim to be. After the meeting is over, each participant
can then retrieve the keys that they've personally verified, sign those
keys, and send the signed keys back to their respective owners.

In order to complete the keysigning in the allotted time, we follow a
formal procedure as seen in V. Alex Brennen's "GnuPG Keysigning Party
HOWTO":
https://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html
It is strongly advised that if you have not been to a keysigning party
before, you read this document: http://blu.org/keysignings/. We're using
the List-based method for this keysigning party, and the keyserver at
subkeys.pgp.net.


It is essential that, before the meeting, you register on the signup
form listed in the attachments. You should bring at least one picture ID
with you. You must also bring your own printout of the report on that
page, so you can check off the names/keys of the people you have
personally verified.

The list will be printed on Wednesday afternoon, the day of the meeting;
be sure to register your key for the keysigning before that. The
official cutoff time is 3:00 pm.


For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org

Parking:
MIT lots require permits after hours.
All Cambridge parking meters use Passport by Phone:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/traffic/Parking/paybyphone
This is active on all Cambridge metered parking spaces. Meters are free
after 8PM

For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90


_______________________________________________
Announce mailing list
Announce@blu.org
http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

Friday, September 14, 2018

Boston Linux Meeting Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - Crypto News, plus our annual PGP/GnuPG Key-Signing Party

When: September 19, 2018 7:00PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Crypto News, plus our annual PGP/GnuPG Key-Signing Party
Moderator: Bill Ricker
Location: MIT Building E-51, Room 335


Please note that Wadsworth St is open from Memorial Drive to Amherst St,
but is closed between Amherst St to Main St. See the ling below for
additional details.
https://courbanize.com/projects/mit-kendall-square/updates

Summary:

Bill's annual crypto talk, PGP keysigning party. Register your key in
advance to participate!

Abstract:
Bill reviews recent crypto news from the past year, and some crypto history.

Cryptography News Highlights since the last year; e.g.,
top named vulnerabilities
preparing for post-Quantum cryptography
books on Eliz. S. Friedman released (wrto Hidden Figures)

The history portion may    include    horse farms, pumpkin patches, IBM
punch-card accounting, and catching atom spies; or the Hidden Figures
book connections; or something else entirely.

Following Bill's presentation, we hold our annual keysigning party.

———————-

A key signing party is a get-together of people who use the PGP
encryption system with the purpose of allowing those people to sign each
others keys. Key signing parties serve to extend the web of trust to a
great degree. Key signing parties also serve as great opportunities to
discuss the political and social issues surrounding strong cryptography,
individual liberties, individual sovereignty, and even implementing
encryption technologies or perhaps future work on free encryption software.

The basic workflow of signing someone's key is as follows:

Verify that the person actually is who they claim to be;
Have them verify their key ID and fingerprint;
Sign their key;
Send the signed key back to them

At the meeting, we go through the first two steps. Each person who
preregistered their key will announce their presence and then read off
their key ID and fingerprint, so everyone can verify that their copy of
the list of keys is correct. Once we've run down the list, we line up,
and each of us examines everyone else's photo IDs to verify that they
are who they claim to be. After the meeting is over, each participant
can then retrieve the keys that they've personally verified, sign those
keys, and send the signed keys back to their respective owners.

In order to complete the keysigning in the allotted time, we follow a
formal procedure as seen in V. Alex Brennen's "GnuPG Keysigning Party
HOWTO":
https://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html
It is strongly advised that if you have not been to a keysigning party
before, you read this document: http://blu.org/keysignings/. We're using
the List-based method for this keysigning party, and the keyserver at
subkeys.pgp.net.


It is essential that, before the meeting, you register on the signup
form listed in the attachments. You should bring at least one picture ID
with you. You must also bring your own printout of the report on that
page, so you can check off the names/keys of the people you have
personally verified.

The list will be printed on Wednesday afternoon, the day of the meeting;
be sure to register your key for the keysigning before that. The
official cutoff time is 3:00 pm.


For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org

Parking:
MIT lots require permits after hours.
All Cambridge parking meters use Passport by Phone:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/traffic/Parking/paybyphone
This is active on all Cambridge metered parking spaces. Meters are free
after 8PM

For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90


_______________________________________________
Announce mailing list
Announce@blu.org
http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/announce