From announce at lists.nycbug.org Wed Sep 13 10:29:00 2017 From: announce at lists.nycbug.org (NYC*BUG Announcements) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2017 14:29:00 +0000 Subject: [announce] NYC*BUG Oct 4th at LMHQ Message-ID: There will be an October NYC*BUG meeting held at LMHQ 645 PM, Wednesday October 4th at 150 Broadway on the 20th floor. "*BSD Tor Bridge Installfest" The Tor BSD Diversity Project Tor is a public and open-source anonymity network, playing a critical role for users facing censorship and surveillance around the globe. There is one glaring weakness about the Tor network: an overwhelming dominance of Linux-based nodes. Since March 2015, The Tor BSD Diversity Project (https://torbsd.github.io/) has worked to rectify this operating system monoculture. TDP managed a number of feats, most notably porting Tor Browser to OpenBSD. For this hands-on installfest, the goal is to approach the massive monoculture in Tor bridges, which are basically private gateways for users blocked from the Tor network. That monoculture is stark as the TDP statistics illustrate (http://torbsd.github.io/oostats.html). Bridge operating system diversity is even worse than for public relays (http://torbsd.github.io/oostats/bridges-bw-by-os.txt). Bridges are ideal services to run from a residential network. Many BSD users in New York City maintain fast underutilized internet connections that can easily help increase diversity. As Tor bridge IPs are not publicly listed, there is little worry about getting flack from internet service providers. Popular small embedded systems, from armv7 BeagleBones to amd64 APU boards, are ideal hardware platforms for a residential bridge. Each of the BSD projects provide strong support for an array of small systems. This meeting will feature a brief introduction to TDP, a quick overview of some diversity statistics, followed by hands-on configuration of hardware on-hand. To make this installfest worthwhile, come prepared with: * appropriate hardware to install the BSD of your choice on, with appropriate cables and install media * an IP address reserved on your private residential network for the Tor bridge Adequate power and bandwidth will be available, along with other NYC*BUG attendees ready and willing to assist. Speaker Bio The Tor BSD Diversity Project launched in March 2015 to inject more *BSD into the Tor public anonymity network. Since then, TDP accomplished a number of important milestones, including porting Tor Browser to OpenBSD with a current effort to port TB to FreeBSD.