ramblings of a {sys,net}admin…

According to an e-mail I received from Froggy, it looks like I’ll be speaking at Notacon 2006.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my presentation submission for Notacon that I sent to the organizers. I got word back that they accepted my presentation and I should be speaking there this year. This will be the first time I’ve made it to Notacon, but it definitely sounds cool.

Check it out!

This evening, I saw the Call For Papers (CFP) on bugtraq for Notacon 2006. I was first introduced to the Notacon guys at Ohio LinuxFest 2005 and have to assume that these guys can host a kickass con (see the photo gallery for proof).

Since being a presenter gets you in for free (and discounted admission on a guest), I figured I’d offer to be a presenter for next year’s convention. I just submitted my topic for presentation which I entitled “Patch Management in a Windows environment”. My abstract was:

“With the number of viruses and worms on the loose increasing almost daily, it’s now more important than ever to keep one’s systems updated. As the number of machines under a single administrator’s control continues to grow, it becomes impossible to keep Windows PCs up to date by hand. In this presentation, Jeremy will describe various ways of keeping large numbers of Windows clients patched and up to date. He will demonstrate how to deploy Service Packs via Group Policy, but will focus on using Microsoft’s Windows Server Update Services to manage large Windows environments.”

I’ve never been to Notacon before, but since it seems to be somewhat “hacker-oriented”, I thought it might be a decent topic. Any thoughts?

So now that October is almost over, I’ll mention that October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Stay Safe Online is a good starting point for information on securing your networks and PCs and it’s also a really good time to (once again) try to educate your (l)users about security stuff. Not that any of them will listen, though, right? Do they ever?

October’s meeting of the Unix Users Group across town at Indiana University will be held this Thursday, October 13th, from 3-4pm. This month’s meeting is entitled “Sharing with Samba”.

Tomorrow, October 11th, the monthly meeting of the Bloomington Linux User Group (BLUG) will be held. Same bat time, same bat place. Check the web site for details and the announcement.

The third annual Ohio LinuxFest 2005 was held on October 1, 2005 at the Greater Columbus (Ohio) Convention Center. I think the “official” attendance count was 726, though there were probably many more who just “strolled in” and didn’t bother to be counted. Lindsey and I showed up a bit late but still got to check out some cool presentations. Some guys from CAcert were there, so I gave ‘em my ID and got “assured” by them. CAcert is a great project, in my opinion, so I donated a few bucks to ‘em, too. We mostly hung out with John and Patty of FreeLists through the night. weez talked us into getting a room and staying the night — glad we did too. The “afterparty” was better than the days activities, as I got completely smashed (photographic evidence can be found in the Ohio Linuxfest Photo Gallery. There were a bunch of people who visited our table at one point or another and hung out with us for a few. I’ll definitely be going back next year, and will have to check out notacon, since those are the guys who threw the party.

There were a number of articles written about the LinuxFest, including articles in NewsForge, KDE News, LinuxPlanet, and The Mad Penguin. If you weren’t there, you missed a good time.

The following was posted to the Security list on Educause by Matthew E. Cornett, Senior Security Analyst in the Information Security Office at the University of Tennessee, but may be of interest (I’d be going if I didn’t already have the EdCert class to go to):

The University of Tennessee, in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the TVA Office of the Inspector General, is proud to announce the First Cyber Security Alliance Conference in Eastern Tennessee. This conference will be held on October 19th and 20th, 2005 at the UT Conference Center in Knoxville, TN.

The theme is “Confronting Cyber Security Challenges.” Its purpose is to promote a closer working relationship between law enforcement, higher education, and industry in identifying and dealing with cyber crime and related matters. The target audience is federal, state, and local law enforcement officers and private industry (IT Professionals/ System Administrators) as well as InfraGard members and academic/government employees involved in Cyber Security Management. The speakers at the Knoxville Cyber Security Summit feature leaders in information security efforts.

This is a break-even event. Therefore, the cost of the conference–which includes breakfast and lunch–is only $75.00 US.

For more details please visit the following URL: http://cybersecurity.utk.edu/

Matrix Integration is hosting the Matrix Integration Technology Expo on October 13, 2005 at the Bloomington Convention Center in Bloomington, Indiana. Matrix Integration supplies alot of the HP solutions at our campus so I’ll be there. Check it out, lunch is free!

Just found out that, in addition to the Bloomington Linux User Group, there’s also the South Central Indiana .NET Users Group in the area. Apparently, there having a meeting Thursday night (tomorrow) in room 1B at the Monroe County Public Library (where the BLUG meeting was last night). No details other than that, though — can’t find a time listed for the meeting on their web site.

Join BLUG and everyone else for a fun-filled day of Linux gaming, demonstrations, food, door prizes and more. The event is partially sponsored by suso.org, who is providing the computers, food, and prizes.

Prizes include retail editions of Unreal Tournament 2004 and Neverwinter Nights, both of which are natively playable under Linux. There will also probably be some hardware giveaways from the guys at The Packet Sniffers. And, as always, we’ll have copies of Linux CDs for people who want to get started.

Read the official announcement for more info.