There are people that watch trains for a hobby, yet we still struggle to track what our own boxes are doing. Don't get me wrong, there's a bunch of great stuff out there to draw pretty pictures of cyberthingies, however most of it is boss entertainment and not suitable for adults and today's happenin' youth. Is it possible to "watch" our networks in some meaningful way, without getting overwhelmed? As a follow up to DC19's Blinkie Lights talk, this foray into the world of human-machine interactivity is focused on showing the entire internet by ASN using high fidelity ASCII art, viewable on any IBM-compatible display*. If you've used ssh-keygen, think of it as a randomart version of internet traffic. Or, if you've ever defragmented a hard drive, think of it as a cylinder map of internet networks. Or, if you don't know what ASCII art is, you don't know 8==D As part of this journey, we'll take hard look at current visualization strategies and why a numeric grid makes sense in a world where GeoIP is a thing. The synspot tool will be released and demoed, its goal to allow users to visualize what ""normal"" is, so that we can detect and research the stuff that seems bananas. Also by comparing synspots, we can see what users have in common and how they differ. It's a new way of looking at data, and the perfect subject to discuss while intoxicated at THOTCON. * Not compatible with Hercules Monochrome
nosteve is the leading authority on interactive psychostimulating visual light emitted and character-mode depictions of realtime interconnect activity. His books, "Detecting Cyber Terror using curl", "An Alcoholic's Guide to vim", and the landmark "Erotic ANSI: It's Not Just You" have been downloaded and indexed many times by automated bots. When not at THOTCON, Steve Ocepek works with a bunch of smart folks at at SecureState in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.