Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Hackspace

Protect your identity and online activity with this secure VPN

Covering your download tracks isn’t the only reason to invest in a VPN service—high-profile hacks and data dumps in recent years have shone a brighter light on online security issues than ever before. It's not just public figures who are at risk, and VPNs have increased in popularity even for casual browsing due to reported extreme government surveillance. Whether it's securing your connection at the cafe down the street, or protecting your local network from prying eyes,  Private Internet Access  is one all-encompassing solution to your online safety. Like most leading VPN services, it masks your location and IP address, encrypts browsing activity, and lets you bypass regional content locks - a tool that is especially valuable while traveling. But where Private Internet Access excels is in actively blocking ads, tracking cookies, and malware—some of the primary sources for compromised privacy. Most importantly, however, Private Internet Access can’t leak any personal informa

Receive Hackspace WiFi Code

When you are running a hackspace, network security presents a particular problem. All your users will expect a wireless network, but given the people your space will attract, some of them are inevitably going to be curious enough to push at its edges. Simply plugging in a home WiFi router isn’t going to cut it. At Santa Barbara Hackerspace they use Unifi access points on their wireless network, and their guest network has a system of single-use codes to grant a user 24-hour access. The system has the ability to print a full sheet of codes that can be cut individually, but it’s inconvenient and messy. So the enterprising hackspace members have used a Raspberry Pi and a receipt printer to  deliver a single code on-demand at the press of a button . The hardware is simple enough, just a pull-up and a button to a GPIO on the Pi. Meanwhile the software side of the equation has a component on both client and server. At the server end is a Python script that accesses the Unifi MongoDB datab