The BlackSun Research Facility (BSRF) is a security community focused on the teaching of computer security. At inception, BSRF was an information site containing tutorials, software, and other material broadly focused on computing, networking, and in particular, Security, but the site was also notable for the active forums, vibrant IRC community, and several pieces of software released by members.

History

BSRF is a (now mostly defunct) security community which was founded in 1995 by njan, raven and fang. The three founders worked together on a Computing/Security glossary of acronyms called acros.txt. When the authors ceased collaboration on the file, they started a website in order to work together on future projects.

As time went on, the website became well know for it's tutorials, both those written by members (many of which are mirrored on other sides such as packetstorm security) as well as virtual lectures on information security via IRC, the transcripts of many of which can still be found at old.bsrf.org.uk.

BSRF moved to the Box Network after several years of operation, joining other sites like Neworder and Astalavista.box.sk. Only one founder remains affiliated with BSRF - Fang was the first founder to cease contributing to the site, followed by Raven, who moved on to found the Security Writers Guild (now infosecwriters.com. Blacksun moved away from the box.sk network in late 2003.

Notable Alumni

BSRF has many Alumni, both participants and staffmembers, who have gone on to a wide range of roles in IT and Security at large. The ranks include several authors and software developers (principally of Free and Open Source software).

Staff Members

Barrie (') Dempster - Co-author of Building Telephony Systems With Asterisk, Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source, and TrixBox Made Easy

James (') Eaton-Lee - Co-author of Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Cory (Phrostbyte) Nelson - Author of PeerGuardian 2

John (aztek) Downey - Author of several pieces of open source code, including several Pear Components[570]

Users / Contributors

Ankit Fadia - Although contended for his accomplishments and security credentials, Ankit Fadia was a BSRF user.

Trivia

BSRF was one of a number of sites included in a Worm, W32/Yaha-L, not (as far as anyone can tell) written by anyone affiliated with BSRF, which reconfigured Internet Explorer to open a number of URLs. During December of 2002, this caused the webserver for BSRF to experience almost 80,000 unique hits a day (compared to a normal mean of approximately a sixth of that number for the time in question).

External links

bsrf.org.uk

Archive of blacksun.box.sk

Archive of bsrf.org.uk