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Intro to Programming with Arduino

OMG, we’re having a class!

You may have heard of the Arduino microcontroller before, but if not, we’re here to tell you all about it! This class will be geared towards those that have no experience with programming, microcontrollers, electronics, or even hackerspaces! Rest assured that those with some deeper digging questions will have knowledgeable members of Hive76 on hand to answer them.

With the purchase of a ticket, you will get 12 hours of instruction spread over 4 class sessions (that’s 4 three-hour sessions) and an Arduino “starter kit” of parts. You have the option of bringing your own Arduino ($55), if you have one, or choosing the package that comes with the Arduino ($75).

Sessions start on June 3rd and continue each Sunday, through June 24th. Class times are 1PM-4PM. Students must bring a laptop with a USB port (Windows, Linux, OS X), and a willingness to have fun.

Tickets can be purchased here. To clarify, students only need to purchase one ticket to attend all four classes.

Seating is limited to only 10 students! Tickets are expected to go VERY fast!

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Sunday Wargame Wrapup

Well the dust has settled, and one winner has emerged. Out of all 5 players, only Steve Mandelbaum owned the box, and in under 2 hours. Players had to first identify the target server by scanning for available hosts and then using nmap to enumerate services. Then players had a choice between brute forcing the ssh service, or grabbing the passwd and shadow files from the anonymous FTP service, the latter resulting in a faster crack. After that, players needed to find the administrator of the system and use sudo to read the full passwd and shadow files. Finally, the root user could be cracked and full access would be granted.

We all had a good time, and I can’t wait for the next challenge!

S4 is meeting for the first time on June 10th at 6 PM, where we’ll be taking a look at a simple penetration test scenario.

Hope to see you there!

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Pentesting Wargame On Sunday

Sunday, May 20th at 6 PM we’re hosting a pentesting wargame. Players will learn how to use common security tools such as Medusa, and John the Ripper, and identify server misconfigurations and administrative carelessness.

Come and join in on the fun! Bring a laptop!

 

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Announcing New Security Group

We’re starting a new group at Hive 76 called “Scheduled Sunday Security Sessions” (an homage to PJ Santoro’s Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness). S4 will focus on computer and electronic security. We’ll have demos and presentations on security related topics, as well as group penetration testing challenges each month.

The first meeting will be on June 10th, at 6 PM.

See you there!

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Stanford U Machine Learning Study Group

Standford University is at it again with another round of free (as in beer) courses! This time they’re joined by the likes of Princeton, Penn, and the University of Michigan!

Why should you care? Well, Hive76 is forming a study group to help individuals tackle this incredible and challenging opportunity to be found within Standford’s Machine Learning course, of course! Our first meeting will be held tomorrow night during Open House Hours (7-11 PM)! If you are interested in taking this course, please take the time to register with Stanford at the link provided here.

As a place to get started, Mike S. of the Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco, has compiled an excellent list of resources for the study group that they have going on the left coast. Do consider joining their ML-specific mailing list!

Folks considering this course should be familiar with programming concepts and linear algebra, for sure! Recommended linear algebra lectures can be found here, and for your open source alternative to MATLAB, check out GNU’s Octave.

See you tomorrow!

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Philly Tech Week Signature Gala

We had an awesome time at the Philly Tech Week Signature Gala last week. While certainly any event with free booze is going to be a hit with us, it was surely all of the amazing people we got to meet. We had quite a few things on display and people were very interested in talking with us about our projects, how we got started, and even the very nature of hacking, DIY, and hackerspaces (To quote Adam Savage, “I reject your reality and substitute my own”).

Manning the table we had Jim Fisher, Chris Terrell, Dave Morfin, Chris Thompson, and me. Here is a video showing off our table and some of the things we had there.