My participation at Afrinic-29 in Hammamet, Tunisia was productive and unique in itself. The event took place between 26-30 November 2018 at Diar Lemdina hotel. These are the days that will always be remembered. Situated in the north of Tunisia, Yasmine Hammamet was the place selected and it was close to the beach. I still can’t believe I was on the Mediterranean beach discussing about Internet-related topics such as DNS, DNSSEC and Policies development in Africa region.
For some reasons, I had to travel to Hungary, then to Germany then to Tunisia. So I got the opportunity to spend a night in Munich on Transit. The hotel in Munich was pretty nice and cozy. On the next day, I flew to Tunisia. Once landed in Carthage in Tunisia, the atmosphere was pretty polluted, but as soon as I reached Yasmine Hammamet, things are different. It was a pretty beautiful and calm place.
My main objectives were to :
Focus on the DNSSEC hackathon carried out under the umbrella of cyberstorm.mu titled Operation KSK-ROLLOVER.
Sharing knowledge in the Africa region.
Allocation of IPv4 and IPv6 in Africa region.
Presenting DNS and DNSSEC.
DNS Flag day.
Security incidents on DNS.
Policy discussion development in Africa.
During the event, I got the opportunity to speak with Afrinic29 fellow, Souad Abidi who shared pretty good experience about the event.
Also met with some guys from Chad republic and we shared some Linux and network techniques. Besides, I met with several guys from the ATI Tunisia telecom and we discussed a lot about the event especially about Policy development. I’m glad to receive media coverage from the cyberstorm.mu team who supported me a lot as well as ICT.IO who published an article about the event.
Overall, the event was very productive. I seized the opportunity to congratulate Afrinic staffs during the open mike session. Indeed, they did a good job which demands extreme planning. During my speech on DNSSEC as Devops engineer at Orange Business Services, several issues were raised such as hackathon carried out by the cyberstorm.mu team and even prospective future hackathon concerning other DNS applications. I also attended few sessions on IPv6, Cert Africa and others. Also got the opportunity to meet with people who are very busy with Policy development in Africa as well as the father of Africa Internet, Nii Quaynor.
During my free time especially at night, I went to the NA3NA3A Karaoke Tunisian songs. It was pretty nice and unique. Took some videos and made some audio recording for the car whilst i’m driving.
In case you missed Day-0 and Day-1 for the IETF 103 hackathon by the cyberstorm.mu team, feel free to have a look. I should admit that Day-2 was a more relaxed day for the SSH team compared to those working for the TLS 1.3 and HTTP 451 projects. Several PR’s sent for all the three tracks which are HTTP 451, SSH and TLS 1.3. It’s more about the testing.
It looks that we had enough time to discuss even more about our future move for the next IETF hackathon. All teams were ready with the patches and several Pull Requests sent. We seized the opportunity to discuss several aspects and experience during the hackathon. Overall, the IETF 103 hackathon went well for all the three tracks.
As regards for the NetSSH project which I worked there was a comment from Mzafekas on Github: “
@jmutkawoa thanks much for the PR. Since this is in some means a breaking change, this would be in the next major version.”
I’m glad that we will have the RC4 deprecated in the new version of NetSSH. We had our live presentation remotely from Mauritius during the IETF 103 hackathon live in Bangkok, Thailand. You can view the presentation here:
IETF Hackathons encourage developers to collaborate and develop utilities, ideas, sample code and solutions that show practical implementations of IETF standards. More than 200 participants have gathered in Bangkok to make the Internet work better.
As usual, someone got an idea to do a mega splash in the pool with the slow-motion video which is pretty nice 🙂
I’m glad that TheRegister also published an interesting article about RC4 deprecation. At cyberstorm.mu, we are also looking forward to the next IETF 104 hackathon which has been scheduled remotely at Prague, Czech.
Today is the first day for the IETF 103 remote hackathon in Mauritius. The cyberstorm.mu team is ready to lead and participate in all the three tracks as champions for the event. We have the TLS 1.3, SSH and HTTP 451. All the three tracks are lead by cyberstorm.mu as champions.
Our first timers for the IETF 103 hackathon is Kheshav Sewnundun, creator of XpressLiteCoin.com and Devops Engineer at Linkbynet Indian Ocean. We also have Diresh Soomirtee, Junior system administrator at Linkbynet Indian Ocean.
Prior before the hackathon, we did some shopping for the basic amenities. We reached at the quarter at a Mauritius Villas, a bungalow in Pointe Aux Piments at around 13:00 hrs. The network was set up with two different ISPs in case of breakdown, we can still be live during the hackathon.
We also celebrated Kifah’s birthday during the hackathon.
At cyberstorm.mu, it’s always the pool that brings more relaxing time. We are also in the Halloween week and some guys even brought their Halloween costumes and went swimming inside the pool.
Most of us already started working on our projects and some pull requests already sent. More testing on progress as well as creating of several patches. We even need to have a discussion on open source licensing to make sure that there are incompatibility issues between different licenses. We made a plan for the three tracks we are championing and it looks to start pretty fine.
By this time, it’s already late here. I really need some sleep to start day 1 for the IETF 103 hackathon 🙂
We are for free and opensource software. We are presenting Mauritius worldwide in the IT sector. We are a Linux and Open source group which is going further and beyond. We believe in collaborative work and team spirit. We believed in running codes. We strived for excellence. We have contributed codes in several popular applications. We have worked on Internet-Drafts. We participate heavily in Hackathons.
Proudly designed by Chromiko, member of cyberstorm.mu
The team met at Flying Dodo, Bagatelle with a sip of Jack Daniel
The next step of cyberstorm.mu is championing several tracks for the IETF 103 hackathon remotely at Bangkok, Thailand. We have been welcomed by many people both from Mauritius and overseas, even from Silicon Valley, USA. No wonder, our past achievements is now a new step to reach today’s objectives – To focus heavily on research and development. Loganaden Velvindron from cyberstorm.mu mentioned on his Medium blog about the change cyberstorm.mu want to achieve: “The namecyberstorm.mu is an interesting one. It’s about change coming. Don’t get me wrong: I still love hacking. For me, hacking is about finding clever solutions to problems.” The youngest guy from the team is also going to participate in the IETF 103 hackathon.
The roadmap of cyberstorm.mu has already been plotted. We believe about us as a team moving in the right direction and showcase Mauritius worldwide. Feel free to join our cyberstorm.mu community Facebook group with a real profile’s name and you would be welcome. We are also present on Twitter and GitHub. Kindly note that all members of cyberstorm.mu have their official @cyberstorm.mu E-mail address. Otherwise, you can also contact us at [email protected]Â
The cyberstorm.mu team has been participating in several IETF hackathons these recent years. For the IETF 102 hackathon, we focused tremendously on innovation: The goal to create two teams for the TLS 1.3 project, one for the Implementation team and the other is Interop. At the same time, getting hands on the HTTP 451 project. The IETF hackathon encourages developers to collaborate and develop utilities, ideas, sample code and solutions that show practical implementations of IETF standards. It is not a competition but a collaborative event.
For this IETF hackathon, myself and Loganaden Velvindron core members of cyberstorm.mu team decided to lead the event. We searched a marvelous venue at Pointe aux Piments, a remote coastal area in the north-west of Mauritius which was very peaceful and can accommodate the whole team including first-timers of the IETF hackathon for three nights. As regards food, the best place is at Triolet, a village nearby which is famous for street foods including Pizza, Indian food, Grilled, Burgers and Brianis. We also chose that venue as it included a WiFi hotspot, several rooms, bathrooms and even a swimming pool.
On day 1, we all set up our lab environments and since most first-timers were in the TLS 1.3 Interoperability team, a plan was already designed. We knew since the beginning that there would be the logistic issues, so we brought spare laptops, screens, memory card, projector etc.. Logan explained the situation we had to deal with especially when it comes to interoperability to the first-timers. Then, they assigned themselves some tasks. At first, it was time-consuming to get started, but at the end of day1, I can feel how everyone was working as a team and looking in the same direction for the TLS 1.3. On the other hand, Veegish was getting hands-on HTTP 451. Whilst the Interoperability team was having fun, the implementation team, on the other hand, was yet another challenge: Improving source code for TLS 1.3 compat layer.
On day 2, everyone woke up early and went for a morning walk. Afterward, the team was back to coding and debugging. Whilst some were on the implementation and Interoperability tasks, Veegish already advanced on the HTTP 451 project. A debrief carried out by logan to understand where the team stands. We had to constantly evaluate ourselves so that we knew in which direction we are moving. At the end of the day, most of us were already in the pool for some chilling moments. I seized the opportunity to make a Time Lapse video with my iPhone 7+ 🙂
On day 3, the atmosphere was intense. The implementation team needs to make sure the code has been tested and it is running correctly. I was heavily involved in the PHP CURL library part. The testing part was very challenging. At some moment I was so tired and hopeless as the testing part was really complex. At the same time, others were trying to help each other. Kifah was also on some bash scripting for the interoperability part. He wanted to automate some tasks. Logan was also looking at his code and helping the others. Well, at the end of the day we were so happy to be able to accomplish what we had planned. Everyone looked so tired. The only option is to go back to the pool.
We also decided to make some mini videoS to relate our experience during the hackathon. I uploaded the videos on YouTube. You can view it from the playlist below:
On day 4, we packed up to our destination. At that very moment in Montreal, the hackathon was still going on. I reached home at about 19:00 hrs Mauritius time. I was assigned a three minutes presentation for the hackathon carried out by the Mauritius team. It was already midnight. I was so tired. I knew that the presentation had to be carried out. Logan was constantly texting me to make sure that I did not fall asleep. You can view the presentation remotely live in Montreal Canada.
What did IETF hackers say about the IETF 102 hackathon?
“What I think was the most productive output during this time for me was pair-programming…”– Kifah
“I was very excited to be part of the Inter-operability team where I worked with OpenSSL, BoringSSL, WolfSSL, and tlslite using TLS1.3 protocols.”– Jagveer
“Making Internet Protocols great again during the IETF 102 hackathon” – Logan
“Finally after long hours of debugging he managed to test the protocol being used by NRPE locally”– Rahul
“Then… we finally got a Client Hello from Wireshark and made the PR”– Nigel
“At first I thought that it would only be working, working and working but besides of work we started creating bonds.” – Jeremie
“I got a lot of advice, support, and motivation to work with my team members and try to implement on a strategic basis and critical thinking the internet protocols and see their limit on a technical perspective.” – Avishai
“Once OpenSSL was installed, I then performed my first TLS 1.3 Handshake, Resumption, and 0-RTT but did run into difficulties with NSS.”– Chromico
“But while everyone is waiting, we are working. We have reached a deeper understanding of how it will affect our lives.”– Codarren
“IETF 102 was very fun and challenging experience in which I got to work on several opensource projects” – Muzaffar
“At first, I did encounter some issues like parsing JSON files, but I manage to work on those issues”– Veegish
We also had a follower on Twitter appreciating our effort and participation during the IETF 102 hackathon. Thanks, Dan York, senior manager at ISOC.
I’m happy that this hackathon was at the required level. It was a great initiative from the cyberstorm.mu team. No major incidents occurred in our HQ at Pointe aux Piments. Everything that was planned went all and it’s worth investing yourself in this collaborative event.
