The hurdles of building custom Nix package for proprietary software

The hurdles of building custom Nix package for proprietary software

Tuesday, Jul 26, 2022

Pushing to far, too hard, in the wrong direction! Today, I’ll digress on a Nix derivation for a proprietary package, namely Zed (free version) from Prim’X, that took a lot of tricks to get working. Further, I’ll detail the multiple paths I took and that turned out to be false leads. TL;DR You can find the derivation (package) on my Github repository here with instruction on how to use the repository here.
@ Tony Cheneau
12 minutes read
Hugo static blog engine with Mastodon comments: step by step quick howto

Hugo static blog engine with Mastodon comments: step by step quick howto

Saturday, Jan 30, 2021

In this short blog entry, I’ll explain how to add a comment system to Hugo’s static blog engine. I’ll expand on Carl Schwan’s excellent blog article and attempt to make it more accessible to Hugo’s newcomers. For the sake of example, I expand from the Dream theme (kudos to g1eny0ung for his great theme!). Foreword All the hard work has been pulled of by Carl. This is merely the steps I had to reproduce to integrate Carl’s suggestion.
@ Tony Cheneau
12 minutes read
Boost your Vim autocompletion with YouCompleteMe and Jedi (on a CentOS system)

Boost your Vim autocompletion with YouCompleteMe and Jedi (on a CentOS system)

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Recently, Steve Francia’s Vim Distribution (aka vim-spf13) brought a new life to my aging vimrc dotfile. It bundles most of the popular plugins that makes you life as a programmer easier (Syntastics, ctrlp, …). The only thing missing to make it into a good IDE is a completion plugin for C and C++. In this brief blog entry, I’ll show you how to install YouCompleteMe on CentOS and improve your Vim experience.
@ Tony Cheneau
4 minutes read
Poor man's NAS, the Pogoplug

Poor man's NAS, the Pogoplug

Tuesday, Nov 13, 2012

If are looking for a cheap, customizable RAID 1 capable, multiple terabytes NAS. Look no more, because the Pogoplug seals the deal. For the price, you will not have bleeding edge performance, but you gain the level of customization of a fully featured GNU/Linux system. Earlier this year, I set out to build my very own Linux-enabled, Do It Yourself, NAS in order to store my RAW pictures and videos. At that time, the very famous Raspberry Pi was not available and I turned to an equally good product named Pogoplug.
@ Tony Cheneau
5 minutes read
Using Firefox Sync Server with Nginx

Using Firefox Sync Server with Nginx

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Recently, I tried to install the Sync Server on a NgInx server but the big Internet could not help me much, so I decided to write this blog entry in an attempt to complete the official documentation. For those who don’t know, the Sync Server provides passwords, bookmarks and sessions synchronisation features between multiple running Firefox’s instances. In the past, I used other alternatives, such as SyncPlaces, but the lack of integration within Firefox finally pushed me away from this solution.
@ Tony Cheneau
4 minutes read
Upgrading a Samsung Q35 laptop to 2.5GB RAM

Upgrading a Samsung Q35 laptop to 2.5GB RAM

Friday, May 20, 2011

Hi readers, Since 4 years already, I am the happy owner of a Samsung Q35 laptop. This is a neat laptop. Among its strong points, I can point its weight (~1.5kg I would say) and its excellent compatibility with GNU/Linux (everything works out of the box!). However, there is a huge drawback: the RAM. By default, there is only 512MB installed. Additionally, this memory module is soldered to the motherboard and thus can not be upgraded.
@ Tony Cheneau
2 minutes read
2010 has been quite a busy year! 2011 does not seems bad either.

2010 has been quite a busy year! 2011 does not seems bad either.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

It has almost been one year since I last published any news on this blog. However, I was to busy/lazy to write more posts. As you can see, a lot happened within only one year: I obtained my PhD (told you I was busy) I moved to the US… …because I started a postdoc at the prestigious National Institute of Standards and Technologies (in the Advanced Network Technology Division) And more importantly, I got married with Julie (probably the best thing I did so far) A load of things changed for me.
@ Tony Cheneau
1 minutes read
Review of the Cowon iAudio i9

Review of the Cowon iAudio i9

Tuesday, Jul 20, 2010

Two months ago, I bought a Cowon iAudio i9 player. I waited a bit before publishing my review because I wanted to be sure that I would have some real life experience with the product. If you do not want to read through the whole review, my opinion is that, while the product deserves its good reputation, I would not consider it perfect and would not advise you to buy one (at least, not before you actually read my review and understand why I can not do so).
@ Tony Cheneau
7 minutes read
Build a customized bootable image of Debian GNU/Linux

Build a customized bootable image of Debian GNU/Linux

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Recently, I was given a laptop on which I couldn’t install any software on the hard drive. Fortunately, this laptop has the ability to boot on USB devices and I happened to have a 8GB USB flash drive (which is, for the records, largely enough to install a Linux Live system on). To add extra complexity, I was required to use a tool (namely a patched version of NTT Docomo’s SEND implementation (that you can find here)) that is provided by Debian packages (.
@ Tony Cheneau
1 minutes read
Using inotify and latexmk to build your latex documents (automatically) while you write them

Using inotify and latexmk to build your latex documents (automatically) while you write them

Friday, Apr 9, 2010

Every now and then, I write an article/report/whatever in LaTeX. Last time I had to do it, I was in a rush. So, I recalled a really nice trick I found out a while ago. This trick allows me to have a .pdf file that is updated each time I save the corresponding .tex file(s). The main idea is to combine two very interesting tools: All of this was true until latexmk was born.
@ Tony Cheneau
2 minutes read

Everything about $me

My name is Tony Cheneau and I’m currently a devops (catchy title) at ANSSI.

I was previously occupying a postdoc position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (also known as NIST), in the Advanced Network Technologies Division. This was a really entertaining job where my main research interests are focused on wireless applications over the Smart Grid and defining new security solution for these applications.

If you are interested in my education (or in hiring me), you can check out my very formal (and not so up to date) resume.pdf.

How you can contact me

My previous projects

  • SimpleRPL: an implementation of the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RFC 6550)
  • NDprotector: an implementation of the Cryptographically Generated Addresses (RFC 3972) and the Secure Neighbor Discovery Protocol (RFC 3971)
  • and more on my GitHub page

Former research interest

During my PhD, I studied several aspects of the Link-Layer security. through the extended use of the Secure Neighbor Discovery protocol (RFC 3971 and RFC 3972).

Other of my previous research interests included MANEMO. MANEMO is the combination of multiple research areas:

  • MANET (Mobile Ad-Hoc Network) specifies how new dynamic routing protocols enable mobile node to route packets over Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks.
  • NEMO (Network Mobility or Network that Moves) defines a protocol similar to Mobile IP where a whole network is moving.
  • AUTOCONF defines an addressing scheme and corresponding solutions to allocate addresses inside a MANET.

Publications

Thesis

  • Tony Cheneau, « Amélioration des adresses CGA et du protocole SEND pour un meilleur support de la mobilité et de nouveaux services de sécurité (Enhancing CGA addresses and the SEND protocol for a better support of mobility application and new security services) », January 2011 manuscript slides

Journals

  • Tony Cheneau, Aymen Boudguiga, Maryline Laurent, « Significantly improved performances of the cryptographically generated addresses thanks to ECC and GPGPU », Computers & Security journal, Elsevier, Volume 29, pages 419-431, June 2010. pdf

Conferences

  • Tony Cheneau, Ranganathan Mudumbai, « Adaptive key management for wireless sensor networks », IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Atlanta, USA, December 2013.
  • Tony Cheneau, Andrei V. Sambra, Maryline Laurent, « A Trustful Authentication and Key Exchange Scheme (TAKES) for Ad Hoc Networks », 5th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS), Milan, Italy, September 2011. pdf
  • Tony Cheneau, Maryline Laurent, « Using SEND Signature Algorithm Agility and Multiple-Key CGA to Secure Proxy Neighbor Discovery and Anycast Addressing », 6th Conference on Network Architectures and Information Systems Security, La Rochelle, France, May 2011. pdf slides
  • Tony Cheneau, Maryline Laurent, « Étude des solutions de proxy Neighbor Discovery sécurisées et proposition basée sur la Signature Agility » (a study of secure proxy Neighbor Discovery solutions and proposition of a Signature Algorithm Agility based solution) , 5ème Conférence sur la Sécurité des Architectures Réseaux et des Systèmes d’Information, Menton , France, May 2010. pdf slides
  • Tony Cheneau, Aymen Boudguiga, Maryline Laurent-Maknavicius, « Amélioration des performances des adresses CGA et du protocole SEND: étude comparée de RSA et d’ECC/ECDSA » (Improving the CGA and SEND protocol performances: a comparative study of RSA and ECC/ECDSA), 4ème Conférence sur la Sécurité des Architectures Réseaux et des Systèmes d’Information, Luchon, France, (best student paper award), pages 139-156, in proceedings (SAR-SSI 2009) (ISBN: 978-2-7483-4833-0), June 2009. pdf proceedings slides
  • Tony Cheneau, Jean-Michel Combes, Une attaque par rejeu sur le protocole SEND » (A replay attack on the SEND protocol), 3ème Conférence sur la Sécurité des Architectures Réseaux et des Systèmes d’Information, Loctudy, France, pages 289-300, in proceedings (SAR-SSI 2008) (ISBN: 978-2-7483-3289-2), October 2008. pdf proceedings slides

Research Report

  • Aymen Boudguiga, Tony Cheneau, Maryline Laurent-Maknavicius, « Usage and Performance of Cryptographically Generated Addresses » TELECOM and Management SudParis, 08-014 LOR, 2008. zip

Internet Drafts

Back in time, I made some propositions inside the CGA and SEND maIntenance working (CSI) group:

  • draft-cheneau-csi-send-sig-agility-02 proposes a Signature Agility Solution to the SEND protocol (RFC3971). link
  • draft-cheneau-csi-ecc-sig-agility-02 on the previous draft and proposes to use Elliptic Curve Cryptography in CGA (RFC 3972) and SEND (RFC 3971). link

Teachings

During my PhD, I happened to give some lecture:

  • Data network (ingénieurs 1ère année)
  • Virtual Private Network (Master 2 CCN, Master spécialisé SSR et ingénieurs 3ème année)

Education

  • 2007-2011: PhD held at the Institut Télécom SudParis under the direction of Maryline Laurent. This PhD was funded by a grant of the ANR for the MobiSEND project.
  • 2007: Master 2 SSI (sécurité des systèmes informatiques), University of Paris XII, obtained with mention bien
  • 2006: Master 1 d’informatique (STIC - F3I), University of Poitiers, obtained with mention bien
  • 2005: Licence 3 d’informatique (TIS - parcours des réseaux), University of Poitiers, obtained with mention bien
  • 2004: DEUG MIAS (mathématiques et informatique en application en science), University of Poitiers
  • 2002: Baccalauréat S Sciences de l’Ingénieur, lycée E. Branly de Châtellerault (Poitiers academy), obtained with mention assez bien