Building your own offline file-sharing and communication system for the inevitable downfall of the Internet

Have you ever considered a world where the Internet in all it’s grandeur and tyre-fire-ness has finally imploded. Well after living for 8 months without the Internet I did and it looked a little like this. The PirateBox is a DIY anonymous offline file-sharing and communication system built with free software and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware.

This workshop will go through the steps of setting up your very own PirateBox, using OpenWRT we will build an offline Internet with an inbuilt chat, file sharing capabilities and image board. Which can then be battery powered and carried around with you! The PirateBox is a beginner friendly privacy and anonymity positive piece of hardware, it introduces students to the basic concepts of hardware hacking, flashing devices, setting up config files etc. More importantly it has a larger cultural impact as it is an easy way for people to anonymously communicate and exchange files in a time where this is becoming difficult. It has previously been used by people to locally share digital media (such as ebooks) and to securely share cryptographic keys by people running CryptoParty workshops. Student Prerequisites This is a beginner friendly course, little to no prior knowledge of OpenWRT is needed, but users should have basic understanding of the command line.