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YubiKey NEO as an OpenPGP token

I was first interested in the idea of using a smartcard to store OpenPGP subkeys when I joined the Free Software Foundation Europe as a Fellow and recieved my FSFE Fellowship Card. By performing all cryptographic operations on the smartcard it would remove almost all the routes by which the secret key material could be compromised as the host operating system never has access to that secret material.

I decided that this was something I wanted to try out and I purchased two Cherry G83-6644 keyboards. One of the nice things I noticed about this product was that it was both FIPS 201 approved and GOST R approved. If both the Americans and the Russians could agree it was a good keyboard, it had a good chance of being a good keyboard.

Amateur Radio and the Internet

The Internet is starting to catch on. In a few years time, we may have Internet connections in nearly every major city across the UK. The real issue that needs to be looked at here is how does this new-fangled technology fit in with Amateur Radio?

I assist with the running of MB7VX, an APRS digipeater hosted at the University of Aberdeen. This station is run under a NoV issued by Ofcom that states that it can be configured only as an “APRS Digipeater”. The recieved packets from this station are copied to a software component that injects the packets into the APRS-IS service, which is Internet based.

Donmouth Local Nature Reserve

Yesterday, when I went for the radio adventure day, I took my camera and took some lovely photos around the beach. The weather was good again today and I know I haven’t done much photography in a while so I thought I’d get some more practice in by taking the camera out again.

I visited the Donmouth Local Nature Reserve which is approximately half a mile from my home on a bearing of 350° from my home in Aberdeen. Sorry there’s no APRS trace for this adventure, my phone still hadn’t been charged from yesterday’s adventure.

Contact

• iain@learmonth.me
• irlxyz
• irlxyz