because that's what academic types do

[solipsistnation]

I submitted a proposal for a presentation at UCCSC, the UC Computer Services Conference. This year they're combining it with the semi-yearly UC Davis IT Security Symposium. I proposed a 1-hour talk on setting up DenyHosts on a central syslog server using rsync to push the hosts.deny file out to any number of clients. It's pretty simple, if you think about it, but I suspect a lot of people don't think about it... Anyway, I can give a 45-minute howto talk and then answer questions or something, and maybe somebody will find it useful. The technical range of the UCCSC tends to be a little lower than, say, dedicated sysadmin conferences, so maybe this will be a good fit. It's an interesting topic for academics, since if you're using DenyHosts on academic shell servers (think "ccc.wpi.edu" for WPI people, or reno.wpi.edu, or, you know, log-in-and-do-your-C-homework systems) you have to be careful to configure it so it will block naughty people trying to bruteforce attack your system but not to block people who just type their passwords wrong a bunch of times...

Anyway, I'll know in March. Hooray for waiting.