La oss prise fruktbarheten, for den lar de snakkesalige slippe til [.NO #DLD]

Eller: Det hjertet er fullt av, renner munnen over med. Her: Trafikkdata og grådighet.

I dag har vi spesiell grunn til å være takknemlige for menneskelig fruktbarhet. Spesielt må vi takke justisminister Storbergets ektefelle for å ha medvirket til at mannen fikk anledning til å ta pappaperm akkurat nå. Uten en justisminister på pappaperm og med forsvarsministeren som vikar hadde vi nemlig ikke fått dagens oppslag i Aftenposten, med den betegnende tittelen "Faremo frykter hackere, men er samtidig ikke så bekymret".

Det interessante kommer først i tredje siterte svar på spørsmål, der vår vikarierende justisminister etter de obligatoriske floskelavleveringene med marginal sannhetsgehalt ('dette er ikke overvåking', 'vi styrker personvernet', osv) avslutter med

Det vil forbause meg mye om vi ikke også får en diskusjon om hvordan trafikkdata kan brukes kommersielt.

Vi skal huske på at Grete Faremo i sin forvisningstid fra politikken (hun forsvant fra justisministerposten i Torbjørn Jaglands regjering midt på nittitallet, etter bråket som oppstod da det viste seg at minst ett medlem av Lund-kommisjonen hadde vært under overvåking mens kommisjonens arbeid pågikk) var innom IT-bransjen, der hun antakelig må ha plukket opp tanken om adferdsdata som handelsvare. Det skulle ikke forundre om akkurat Faremos tidligere arbeidsgiver Microsoft ville være svært takknemlig mottaker av detaljerte oppplysninger om hvem som snakker sammen og skriver til hverandre, med noe nær komplette adferdsdata for hele befolkningen. Når kommersiell utnyttelse er bare en forsnakkelse unna, er det grunn til å spisse ørene.

Men for all del, i det perspektivet -- at motivene bak iveren for elektronisk brev- og besøkskontroll for hele nasjonen ikke er rent politiske, men også klart kommersielle -- avslører merkelig nok tilhengerne av det uspiselige direktivet mer menneskelighet enn noen gang før. Det handler kanskje helt enkelt om grådighet. Så er de kanskje ikke primært ute etter å ha kontroll på politiske motstandere likevel. De ønsker å selge detaljerte opplysninger om ditt og mitt privatliv til høystbydende, gjerne flere ganger til forskjellige aktører til hver sin pris.

Men før dataene kan selges eller på annen måte overlates til kommersielle interesser, er det avgjørende at dataene faktisk blir samlet inn. I dag er innsamling og oppbevaring av detaljerte trafikkdata i virkelig kommersielt interessant skala (les: Til: og Fra: med nøyaktig tidspunkt for all epost, samme for telefonsamtaler, men da supplert med posisjonsdata med brukbar oppløsning) ikke tillatt i Norge. Det er de enkelte operatørene som står for innsamlingen, og hvilke data som blir samlet inn, er styrt av hver enkelt operatørs faktureringsrutiner og driftstekniske hensyn.

Det lovforslaget som Arbeiderpartiet for tiden er alene om å gå inn for, forutsetter at større mengder adferdsdata enn noengang før blir samlet inn og lagret, og sannsynligvis vil man også ende opp med ett sentralt og ytterst attraktivt lagringssted. Lovforslaget legger riktignok opp til at utlevering av data fra det sentrale samlingsstedet skal være under domstolskontroll, men det er en smule påfallende hvor lite bekymret vår fungerende justisminister er for at brev- og besøkskontrolldataene skal komme på avveie.

Politiet har alltid hatt mulighet til å hente ut og reservere disse dataene når det er behov for det, sentral lagring vil gjøre det lettere å hente ut virkelig verdifulle data om deg og meg for de som ikke har skrupler med å gå bakveier til dataene. Samtidig vet vi fra de landene som har innarbeidet datalagringsdirektivet i nasjonal lov at direktivet helt klart ikke bidrar til å bedre oppklaringsgrad eller forekomst av kriminalitet, og at flere EU-land har kjent direktivet eller innføringslovene grunnlovsstridige. Men alt dette bekymrer tilsynelatende ikke vår fungerende justisminister. Kanskje neste datalagringslov vil gjøre det lettere å selge data om ditt og mitt privatliv over bordet.

Stortingsbehandlingen av datalagringsdirektivet innledes med høringer 7. og 9. februar. Se sakssidene på stortinget.no (med informativ samleside) for detaljer.

I will not mindlessly paste from HOWTOs

Even with proper discouragement, mindless pasting is rampant, it seems

It had to happen sooner or later.

My incoming mail this morning had one item about what I thought was a fairly trivial misconfiguration, and I answered it like this

From: peter@bsdly.net (Peter N. M. Hansteen)
Subject: Re: interesting-traffic
To: Name Withheld <Name.Withheld@gmail.com>
Cc: peter@bsdly.net
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:44:35 +0100

Name Withheld <Name.Withheld@gmail.com> writes:

> how should i handle the 'intersting-traffic macro not defined' error
> in pf.conf on obsd 4.8 reboot syntax error starting pf?

either define the macro (remove a # comment perhaps) or remove any
references to it.  Have you been pasting from a partial example
floating around the web perhaps?

- P

Then a few sips of coffee later, it dawned on me: the macro interstring-traffic is more than likely one I made up for the bridge example in the short (and now rarely updated) version of my PF tutorial document. (I added the strongly worded note there as a reaction to this incident).

So it's at least partly my fault. I put an incomplete example out there, hoping that whoever stumbled upon the material would grasp the context and fill in any needed details. The important bits are all there, but when pasted into a config without checking, the result will be just as Name Withheld experienced.

But then I can't really take the full blame: Had he bothered to read the rest of the document or even the book that's a further development, he would have seen this admonition which comes out even more clearly in the slides version. If for some reason the links are inoperative, here it is:

The Pledge of the Network Admin

This is my network. 

It is mine 
or technically my employer's, 
it is my responsibility 
and I care for it with all my heart

there are many other networks a lot like mine,

but none are just like it.

I solemnly swear 

that I will not mindlessly paste from HOWTOs.

I actually recite that at the very beginning of all my tutorial sessions, and while of course it's sometimes accompanied by giggles, the point remains: there is no substitute for actually understanding your configuration. Testing (if nothing else, a quick sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.conf and reading the output before rebooting) would have helped enormously too.

---

For those hungry for fresh PF tutorials, I'll jump the gun and announce that there will be one by yours truly at AsiaBSDCon 2011, final schedule to appear on that URL shortly. A few other events are in the works too, more details here and at the PF tutorial page when details are settled.

Ikke styrket personvern, men brev- og besøkskontroll for hele folket [.NO]

En ny dag og naturligvis enda et patetisk forsøk på nytale fra justisministeren. Pluss en interessant invitt.

[Another .no politics post, I'll be back with international-style geekery soonish]

Les gjerne Knut Storbergets magnum opus Vi styrker personvernet nå, og husk på å lagre det, slik at det bevares for ettertiden.

Når vi pålegger operatører som Telenor, Netcom og andre å lagre trafikkdata, så styrker dette personvernet, sies det.

Trafikkdata handler i praksis om hvem du snakker med. For de av oss som går rundt med mobiltelefon hele tiden, vil trafikkdataene også vise hvor vi har oppholdt oss på et gitt tidspunkt. Vanligvis ikke med samme nøyaktighet som GPS-sporingen i mobiltelefonen, men nøyaktig nok til at posisjonsdata fra telenettet allerede har vært brukt som bevis i straffesaker.

I dag logger og lagrer teleoperatører og internett-tilbydere de dataene som er interessante for faktureringsformål eller som gir saklig grunnlag for teknisk drift, vedlikehold og planlegging. Og i alle sammenhenger jeg er involvert, så kaller vi dette for nettopp overvåking. Datamaskiner er nemlig uhyre godt egnet til å ta unna arbeid som mennesker ville blitt anstrengt av å utføre. Og i sammenhenger som å sørge for at kunder blir fakturert for rett mengde trafikk, se utvikling over tid i for eksempel overført volum, teknisk diagnosearbeid på utstyr (for eksempel for å se hvordan det oppfører seg under stor last) og planlegging av endringer er slik overvåking faktisk både nødvendig og nyttig.

Men når fakturaene er betalt og analysene sluttført, er det ingen saklig grunn til å beholde dataene, og de blir slettet. Summer i regnskap og samleverdier for teknisk tilstand er alt vi trenger. Rådata overlates ikke til uvedkommende.

Men justisministeren liker altså ikke at vi kaller dette for overvåking, og jeg er glad vi får denne invitten til å være behjelpelige med å finne et mer presist uttrykk. Mitt forslag er, i all beskjedenhet:

brev- og besøkskontroll for hele folket

Dette er betydelig mer presist enn det noe ulne "overvåking", og vi oppnår samtidig å ta livet av forestillingen om at "Internett" er noe som eksisterer separat fra samfunnet. Det har nemlig aldri vært slik at datamaskiner og kommunikasjonen mellom datamaskinbrukere var noe som eksisterte utenfor samfunnet eller utenfor lovene vi må forholde oss til. I Norge har en helt dominerende del av befolkningen nettopp Internett som hovedkanal for kontakt med slekt, venner, kolleger og de fleste samfunnsfunksjoner.

Når alle våre trafikkdata blir registert og sammenholdt, blir vi i praksis utsatt for en grad av kontroll som ikke skiller seg vesentlig fra det vi ilegger vareteksfanger -- altså personer som holdes i forvaring på grunn av klar mistanke om straffbare forhold -- som skjerpende tiltak når det er fare for bevisforspillelse under etterforskning.

Jeg vil oppfordre justisministeren og andre debattanter til å ta fatt i dette terminologiskiftet. Først når vi diskuterer datalagringsdirektivet som innføring av elektronisk brev- og besøkskontroll har vi tatt steget over i en edruelig debatt med virkelighetsbasert terminologi.

Så får vi heller komme tilbake til de klart uttrykte ambisjonene om å lagre innholdet i kommunikasjonen senere, om historien faktisk gjentar seg som en tragedie.

---

Oppdatering 1: Petter Reinholdtsen minte meg på et interessant datapunkt: I Danmark, der EUs datalagringsdirektiv allerede er innbakt i lovverket, blir det lagret gjennomsnittlig mer enn åtti tusen dataelementer per danske per år som følge av datalagringsdirektivet. En opplysende artikkel finnes i norske Digi.no: Lagrer 82 000 DLD-poster per danske i år. Vel verd å lese for interesserte.

Du er en forbryter eller et virus, så Arbeiderpartiet vil overvåke alle, hele tiden

Er du ikke forbryter, kommer du til å bli det. Og vi vet at du kommer til å begå overgrep mot barn, mener Arbeiderpartiet.

[This post is in Norwegian only. I'll be back with the regular more-or-less-ordinary geekery for my international friends later.]

Hovedoppslaget på NRK1 Dagsrevyen 23. desember 2010 dreide seg i følge annonseringen om 'manglende tiltak mot spredning av overgrepsbilder på Internett'.

"Både politiet og internettselskapene kjenner til metoden for å begrense flyten av overgrepsbilder på nett. Men de tar den ikke i bruk."¹⁾

Metoden de henviser til, er om vi tolker innslaget rett, å bruke samme metoder som man bruker i antivirus-systemer til å identifisere og stoppe overgrepsbilder. Som politisk propaganda for totalovervåking og som reklame for Norman Antivirus fungerte dette reklameinnslaget kanskje bra, men det er verd å påpeke en del åpenbare tekniske og samfunnsmessige svakheter.

Den teknologien som blir omtalt i innslaget, går enkelt sagt ut på å generere en 'signatur' for hvert virus. Dette gjør man typisk ved å utføre en serie beregninger på innholdet og dermed få en slags avansert tverrsum. Denne tverrsummen eller signaturen kan sin tur med stor grad av sikkerhet (men aldri absolutt) kan brukes til å identifisere nye forekomster av de samme dataene. Dersom en ny datamengde eller fil som blir utsatt for beregningene gir samme resultat som en tidligere kjent fil, så er det med overveiende sannynlighet snakk om identiske data, eller samme fil.

Dette er teknikken som antivirusprodukter har brukt i mer enn 20 år, og et typisk antivirusprodukt i dag gjør stadige oppslag mot lister på flere hundre tusen signaturer.

Så langt alt vel, dette er kjent teknologi. Det reportasjen nokså beleilig unnlot å nevne, er at signatur-teknikken fungerer bare når det er tale om identiske data. Virusfirmaer som Norman vet smertelig vel at det trengs bare en triviell endring, for eksempel å endre et enkelt tegn i en del av viruset som ikke har direkte innvirkning på hvordan det kjører, så slipper det nå 'muterte' viruset forbi filtreringen, siden innholdet skiller seg fra det som allerede er kjent.

Resultatet er velkjent: Jo flere påfunn de slemme kommer med og jo flere nye varianter som dukker opp, jo flere signaturer må vi sjekke mot. Et typisk antivirus-sysmem (Clam Antivirus) har til sammen i sine databaser vel 1,25 millioner signaturer.

Om man bruker den samme tilnærmingen på bilder, vil det være tilstrekkelig å justere fargepalett eller gjøre en enkel beskjæring slik at formen på bildeflaten endres, så vil bildet passere. For video vil helt ubetydelige redigeringer som å fjerne eller flytte rundt på noen utvalgte øyeblikk i en sekvens være tilstrekkelig. Og siden den nødvendige manipuleringen av et bilde er betydelig enklere å gjøre enn programmeringsgrepene som må til for å gjøre endringer i et virus, må vi anta at antallet signaturer vil vokse betydelig fortere enn det tilsvarende antallet signaturer for skadelig programvare.

Så lenge dette dreier seg om filer man finner under beslag hos mistenkte, er antakelig dette likevel et håndterlig problem. Filer med ukjent innhold kan man sjekke manuelt.

Noe mer interessant blir det når Inger-Marie Sunde argumenterer for at "politiet og internetttilbyderne med loven i hånden kan filtrere folks datatrafikk". I klartekst betyr dette at Inger-Marie Sunde endelig sier offentlig og i klartekst det vi lenge har ant hun mente, nemlig at totalovervåking av oss alle, med fullstendig innholdsfiltrering av all datatrafikk er både ønskelig og nødvendig. I innslaget brukte hun til overmål formuleringer som at 'staten har plikt til' kontrollere innholdet i internett-trafikk.

Det bør heller ikke være noen stor overraskelse at vår justisminister Storberget avslutningsvis så ut til å omfavne dette påståtte behovet for innholdsfiltrering av all kommunikasjon i befolkningen som argument for sin aktuelle hjertesak: innføring av datalagringsdirektivet.

Så om det noen gang har vært grunn til å tvile på det, er det nå helt klart:

Arbeiderpartiet mener du er forbryter eller kommer til å bli det.
Derfor skal du overvåkes, hele tiden.

At det også kan oppleves som plagsomt for et parti som regner seg som statsbærende å ikke ha fullt innsyn i hva opposisjonen holder på med, kan vi levende tenke oss. For de av oss som har blitt satt under overvåking kun med bakgrunn i politiske standpunkter²⁾ er det blitt stadig mer interessant å vite om det fortsatt finnes politikere som har et snev av demokratisk sinnelag. Arbeiderpartiet er med dette varig diskvalifisert.

---

Noter:
1) Tatt fra tekstutgaven av innslaget, http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/norge/1.7438572

2) Første halvår 1985 var jeg som nyvalgt tillitsmann for sivilarbeiderne i mitt fylke litt overrasket over at det som regel tok flere sekunder med spolelyder før summetonen dukket opp når jeg skulle ringe. Og til de som kom med de litt pussige sidekommentarene: vi hørte dere.

The Book of PF, 2nd ed: It's Here!

Yes, it's that time of the year again -- we missed both Halloween and the OpenBSD 4.8 release, but hot on the heels of both, here it is:

The Book of PF, 2nd Edition is here, a box of author's copies turned up here just after lunchtime, and were taken well care of by Nora and Birthe.

This means, of course, that those of you who preordered will be receiving your copies shortly (mod the usual factors eloquently described by Michael Lucas here, the printer in my case is in Louiseville, Quebec), those who have reason to expect copies from my hoard here can rest assured that I'm taking them to the post office right after this. There's an illegible scrawl on some early pages, sorry 'bout that.

Better bookstores online and elsewhere will have it, or you could make it part of a bundle by ordering from the OpenBSD orders page. You will be going there for your six monthly fix anyway, won't you?

Upcoming events: The plans are not fixed yet, but you should expect me to turn up at BSD-themed events over the next few months. Look for announcements here, tweeted, or via the usual mailing lists.

NOTE: This article refers to the now outdated second edition, which has been superseded by The Book of PF, 3rd Edition, which covers changes up to and including OpenBSD 5.6. For the purpose of learning network technology in general and PF in particular, the significantly updated third edition is a better choice than the second edition. Also see the October 25, 2015 post about the arrival of my third edition author copies.

If It Runs OpenBSD, It Has To Be Important

If we are starting to see targeted attacks on OpenBSD systems, the world has become more interesting.

A lazy Sunday turned a tad more interesting when Dragos Rui, a person usually involved in high-quality security work (or somebody with access to his twitter account) tweeted this:

Analysis of recently deleted data on compromised server has turned up an OpenBSD boot sector trojan worm? Volunteer deconstuctors?

There have been no further updates as of this writing, and without access to the actual files in question, we can not offer any real meat on the actual payload, so any preliminary conclusions will be uncertain at best. But it is possible to come up with a threat assessment based on general knowledge of what it would take for a boot sector based OpenBSD exploit to make it into the wild.

OpenBSD is used in a wide range of environments (see the OpenBSD at work page for some examples, the list is by no means exhaustive), and since it is commonly perceived to be one of the most secure general-purpose operating systems available, it should be no surprise to find OpenBSD systems in mission critical roles.

So the motive for trying to forge a way in, past a system that is generally considered trustworthy, is obvious. If you hit the right targets, the potential payoff could be huge.

Then it becomes interesting to consider how you would go about to compromise a system running OpenBSD. If we leave aside social engineering such as bribing the sysadmin or stealing the passwords database for the moment, the traditional, and obvious, way to compromise a system is to find an exploitable, unpatched bug and use that to take control of the system.

The OpenBSD source tree is available to the world (in fact, OpenBSD was the first project to make its CVS repository available via anonymous read-only CVS), but writable only by small group of developers. The developers tend to concentrate on the in-development -current, but they do produce a small number of patches to the released version that become available via the patches page. If you want to study the OpenBSD development process more closely, there are a number of good articles and presentationas available via this page, but the important message is that insisting on code correctness and continuous code audits have yielded quite solid results. Exploiting any bugs you would be lucky enough to find in OpenBSD is harder than elsewhere.

But apart from patches to -stable, OpenBSD users usually do not update their systems by recompiling source. Neither do we usually run automatic system upgrades via an upgrade service. For packages, $ sudo pkg_add -u (assuming your PKG_PATH is set to something sensible) provides binary upgrades. For base system upgrades (the only time the boot sector code is likely to be updated), we tend to run the installer in upgrade mode and point it to a set of known good file sets. If the installer finds that a file set does not match the expected SHA256 checksum, it will warn you in no uncertain terms. The same messages will turn up if you, like me, tend to install snapshots on at least some systems as they become available, but sometimes forget to copy the correct bsd.rd into the right place.

The lesson here is that to taint an OpenBSD system, your most likely way in would be to replace a full set of installation files on your likely target's usual mirror, complete with checksums that makes the installer report your modified file sets as genuine. This has two obvious implications: one, you should never install anything on a mission critical system unless you find identical files on several different mirrors, and you should make sure that checksums from one mirror match the files on another. Watching the errata page for the release you are running is a good idea, too, of course.

This gives the proper context to the suspected exploit Dragos reported. The suspect still has some interesting properties. The boot sector code is very small and any changes would be relatively easy to spot once the system is running, but the code there runs early in the boot process and is there mainly to fetch other code that makes sure the system boots. The only useful modification here for an attacker would be to modify the boot loader code to load something that replaces the OpenBSD kernel and performs actions whatever the attacker wants.

The result of modifying the early stage boot code would more than likely be a trashed system unable to boot, but an appropriately skilled attacker who managed to insert code in the right places might be able to pass off a subtly modified system as a genuine one and keep it running for long enough to matter. That's why it will be very interesting to hear whatever real information becomes available about this suspected OpenBSD-targeting attempt.

If we are starting to see attack attempts specifically targeting OpenBSD systems, it could be an indication that at least some criminals have achieved a level of skill, or at least reached a new level of ambition. I have a strong feeling that the OpenBSD developers' efforts have paid off and creating a workable exploit will be very hard, but in the meantime, now is not the time to be slacking, even if all your critical system run OpenBSD. But you have a head start.

---

If you are curious about the status of the The Book of PF, second edition, preorders have started, and a PDF version is available right away. Physical copies will start shipping as soon as they exist, likely around November 10th. (Update 2015-03-05: For fresh reading material on PF, you're better of with the newer Book of PF, third edition, which became available in late 2014.)

EuroBSDCon 2010: The Finest Software Tool Is Alive And Well

From mainframe replacements to firewall appliances, the BSD family of systems is a toolbox flexible enough to baffle insiders and newbies alike. EuroBSDCon 2010 was good fun.

I arrived in Karlsruhe on Thursday night, and ran into Erwin Lansing, Mark Linimon and a few other FreeBSD devsummit attendees at the perfect moment to tag along to dinner at a sort-of-greek place. Forgettable food, but fortunately the dark beer was quite drinkable and the various FreeBSDers made for good company.

Then up relatively early on the Friday. My own path through the conference started with the by now fairly familiar PF tutorial, which as you may be aware, is a close relative of The Book of PF, really soon now out in its second edition. Off the top of my head I'm not sure how many times I've given some version of the PF tutorial, but BSD-DK members will find that this edition of the slides borrows heavily from the somewhat swifter paced introduction they saw in Copenhagen this August.

Among my seven attendees were several who had hoped to be able to catch early copies of The Book of PF, second edition, which I had strongly hinted in the tutorial description would be available by now.

That did not happen, unfortunately, but it's getting very close -- last week entering final-really-final corrections to the index and the laid out book itself took up a good part of my non-office time, and the last word from my contact at No Starch was that the complete and final PDF would land in my inbox for final approval before going to the printers. Amazon.com now lists a likely delivery date of November 15th, which I for one think is a rather realistic guesstimate.

The tutorial went roughly as expected, unfortunately without live demos (demo equipment has a tendency to break badly during air transport or soon afterwards just in time muck up your presentation), and produced just enough good questions that it's likely useful to keep up the effort to maintain the tutorial. Slides are available from roughly where you would expect them.

After the session I ran into Thordur Bjornson (thib@) in the bar-cum-waiting area downstairs at the hotel, waiting for various other OpenBSD developers to arrive. This year's conference had a pleasantly larger than usual number of OpenBSD topics on the program, with some rather interesting talks scheduled for the first day. After a few beers we had reached critical mass with the arrival of among others Theo (deraadt@), Henning Brauer (henning@) and Felix Kronlage (fkr@) we found food and beer at a conveniently local eatery. Then back to the hotel bar for (slightly better) beer and mingling with arriving conference attendees and organizers.

The conference proper started on the Saturday with a "Software tools" themed keynote by Poul-Henning Kamp. PHK is always witty and fun to listen to, and he took us through a number of fresh perspectives on how, even though the world has changed dramatically in several ways and the BSDs still manage to kick ass, we need to keep up the effort to stay relevant.

FreeBSD jails have been a major attraction for quite a while, and I took in the two back to back jails talks by Bjoern A. Zeeb and james Britton. Both talks were fun refreshers on jails, with each presenting a preview of what may turn up in FreeBSD 9 jails code, plus of course tidbits like Bjoern's anectdote about setting up a million jails on the same physical server.

I was intending to attend thib@ and oga@'s OpenBSD on large memory systems talk, but was unfortunately diverted into a meeting that lead to me becoming slightly more involved in future EuroBSDCons. More details on that at a later time, the meeting ran for long enough that the next talk I did catch was reyk@'s iked(8) talk.

If you're on OpenBSD 4.8 or newer, man iked will give you the full story. If you're not that fortunate, it's nice to know that OpenBSD 4.8 gives you a new key exchange daemon for IPsec, up to date with the latest versions of all relevant protocols and able to handle all the nasty little details for IPsec communication with operating systems this column would rather not mention. A good talk about a very useful program, and during the questions part, Theo de Raadt pulled out OpenBSD 4.8 CD sets for attendees who had not already preordered to buy. It's almost a month until the official release date, but the CDs do exist and are likely on their way to early preorderers.

Henning's talk about the state of the OpenBSD networking code was good fun and to the point as always. No shocking new revelations for those who have followed the subject closely like yours truly, but do look out for this talk's slides when it hits the openbsd.org papers section along with the other EuroBSDCon 2010 presentations, hopefully soon.

The social event was conveniently placed in the hotel restaurant and bar area, where something called "Phönix Disco" had set up their equipment, including earth mover size speakers and a mirror ball hanging from the ceiling. Inbetween the dining noises and music, techie talk (at my table, OpenBSD internals, with a helping of ACPI insanities) could be heard. At some point they turned on their laser strobes, which made me queasy enough that I retired to my room soon enough to be in reasonable shape for the early Sunday morning sessions.

The 09:15 sessions on the Sunday offered a choice between Dru Lavigne's BSD Certification talk (highly recommended for your next event if you haven't taken it in already, she not only writes well, she's a brilliant presenter as well), and "Hacking NanoBSD for fun and profit" by Patrick Hausen, who has twisted the NanoBSD setup (originally intended for tiny machines) to serve as a basis for maintaining a hosting environment consisting mainly of regular-sized and capable servers. I'm already quite familiar with the bsdcertification.org efforts (and I recommend getting involved if you aren't already), so I decided to try Patrick's talk which turned out to be very enjoyable and presented some good ideas that could very well be carried over to other BSDs.

One other interesting talk that morning was Hans-Martin Rasch's "From Mainframe to FreeBSD", chronicling the gradual and successful migration by a subscriptions and mass mailings company from their legacy mainframe based system to an all-FreeBSD setup, of course shedding costs in the pretty serious range along the way.

The next time slots had a "Quo vadis ZFS" talk by Martin Matuska, that fortunately contained not the usual "see how great ZFS is" but rather focused on the challenges involved in using ZFS code, technical and legal as things stand today. The FreeBSD project seems to have concluded that the way ZFS is included in their code base does not pose legal problems in itself, but there could be other submarine issues. Apparently the NetApp vs Sun patent suit had ended with one patent invalidated and a settlement whose terms were not disclosed plus the remaining two patents under reexamination. Two unresolved patent issues would be enough to scare me off, but then again the ZFS feature set is perhaps too tempting to not take a few risks for.

Next up were espie@'s back to back talks about the *amazing* work he's been doing with OpenBSD packages. Before lunch, "the long road to pkg_add -u ... and beyond" which took us through the background and the design choices and evolution that took us to the point where upgrading your packages with pkg_add -u can be reliably expected to work. All I can say is that it was an excellent presentation about top-notch work that has made the life of OpenBSD users everywhere a lot better. The after lunch part, "efficient distributed package builds in OpenBSD" took us to the slightly more esoteric part of the world that contains the magic that makes sure the binary packages you expect to have at the other end of your pkg_add command actually exist. Another very enlightening talk, and this set of talks was certainly my favorite at this conference.

For further information on the topics mentioned in this column, the EuroBSDCon web site is the natural place to start. The OpenBSD developers' presentations will appear in the papers section of the OpenBSD web site, while my slides, as usual are available from the NUUG site.

Update 2015-04-02: This article refers to the second edition of The Book of PF. The third edition of that title (linked in the previous sentence) became available, with significant updates, in late 2014 and is overall a better resource for learning about networking and PF on all PF-capable systems.