Meeting #10 announcement: Fiber optic networks

Topic: Fiber optic networks
Speaker: Simeon Miteff
Date: 1 March 2010
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Venue: University of Pretoria, lecture hall 2-24 in the IT building.

Simeon (hi, it’s me…) will be presenting a talk about fiber optics in computer networks, covering the basics like fiber types and transmission technologies, then discussing advancements (40/100Gbps, etc), and wrapping up with some commentary on fiber network roll outs in South Africa.

See you there!

For directions (including an aerial photograph) please see the meetings page.

Meeting #9 feedback: Attacks and Defences

Topic: Attacks and Defences
Speaker: Marco Slaviero
Date: 1 February 2010
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Venue: University of Pretoria, lecture hall 2-24 in the IT building.

Slides:

Although this talk was entitled Attacks and Defenses, it focused mostly on hacks, and pretty cool ones at that. Marco walked us through some recent attacks against Win32 and FreeBSD on a kernel level, as well as some application layer stuff (x509, web apps, cloud attacks). Delivered with insight and humor this was an excellent talk. Thanks Marco and everyone who attended (thanks also for support from SensePost staff).

New dates and venues for 2010

Here is a list of new dates and venues for TLUG meetings in 2010. I’ve also updated the Google calendar. We’ll announce each talk with speaker and topic as we go along.

DateVenue
2010-02-01IT Building 2-24
2010-03-01IT Building 2-24
2010-04-12IT Building 2-24
2010-05-03IT Building 2-24
2010-06-07IT Building 2-24
2010-07-05IT Building 2-24
2010-08-02IT Building 2-24
2010-09-06IT Building 2-24
2010-10-04IT Building 2-24
2010-11-01IT Building 4-3
2010-12-06IT Building 2-24

Meeting #9 announcement: State of the security world

Topic: State of the security worldAttacks and Defences
Speaker: Marco Slaviero
Date: 1 February 2010
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Venue: University of Pretoria, lecture hall 2-24 in the IT building.

Update:

PLEASE NOTE THE VENUE HAS CHANGED A SECOND TIME

For directions (including an aerial photograph) please see the meetings page.

Meeting #8 feedback: Smashing the stats for fun and profit

Topic: Smashing the stats for fun and profit
Speaker: Shaun Dewberry
Date: 7 December 2009
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Venue: University of Pretoria, lecture hall 1-18 in the Economics and Management Science building
Slides: shaun_tlug_presentation.pdf (1.8 MB)
Audio recording: tlug-talk-8-shaun-smashing-the-stats-for-fun-and-profit.ogg (5.2 MB)
Feedback:
Shaun presented his work on gaming a popular South African blog aggregator ranking and pay-per-impression web advertising system with simple shell scripts. Thanks to all who attended.

Meeting #8 announcement: Smashing the stats for fun and profit

Topic: Smashing the stats for fun and profit
Speaker: Shaun Dewberry
Date: 7 December 2009
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Venue: University of Pretoria, lecture hall 1-18 in the Economics and Management Science building (building 54 on this map: http://web.up.ac.za/interactivemaps/mapeng/maincampus.htm).

Event calendar and new/reorganized links

So, I’ve created a public Google Calendar for TLUG (and related) events, now embedded at the top of the sidebar on the right. This is how I hope for it to work:

Other changes:

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Meeting #7 feedback: Botnets

Topic: Botnets
Speaker: Beau Grobler
Date: 2 November 2009
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Feedback:
Beau presented his talk to ~22 guests and included a case study of an actual botnet related to an ongoing investigation. For this reason, (as Jaco points out) there won’t be any audio or slides published, sorry. I guess the point is that you should attend the meetings! :-)

General feedback from all those who attended was very positive. Thanks to Beau, Jaco and all our guests!

Meeting #7 tonight: Botnets (topic changed)

Hi All

Our topic for tonight has changed, Beau will be talking about botnets. See you all there!

Regards,
Simeon.

Topic: Botnets
Speaker: Beau Grobler
Date: 2 November 2009
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Venue: University of Pretoria, lecture hall 1-18 in the Economics and Management Science building (building 54 on this map: http://web.up.ac.za/interactivemaps/mapeng/maincampus.htm).

What TLUG is (and isn’t)

TLUG is an informal and diverse group of people with a common interest in Linux, UNIX, Open Source, electronics, networking and any other interesting and vaguely related (geek|hack)ery. One evening each month we get together at a venue on the University of Pretoria campus, and get someone to present a talk on ${topic_of_their_choice}. Afterwards we talk shop for a bit, have some laughs, and go home.

We also have this blog, some mailing lists, some web forums, a wiki, an IRC server (irc.tlug.org.za) and a Jabber Server (tlug.org.za), all of which is used to varying degrees for collaboration and discussion.

There is no formal TLUG membership (if you’re on the mailing list, consider yourself a member), and we are open to everyone who would like to to participate (including the general public). Organization and administration is handled by a handful of people, most of which are UP alumni and have jobs and lives outside the University. We do this in our spare time.

TLUG is not an official UP student society, thus we do not get any money from the University, nor do we charge for membership (or anything else). Our online services run on hardware donated by ULS and hosted at the UP BI department. The UP CS department provides the venue for our meetings.

Since we rely on the generosity of our friends and former bosses/colleagues at UP for facilities, and on donations and volunteers for everything else, we can’t pay people to present talks at our meetings.

I hope this clears things up :-)