![]() Also a big thanks to the DEFCON organizers as a whole, who allow people like us to engage in these puzzle-solving shenanigans, and giving 1o57 a place to create and foster the hacker mindset.įinally, a big thank you and congratulations goes out to Co9’s newest members, and four complete DEFCON newbies (congrats on your first con!): First and foremost, a big shout out to 1o57 for putting together these amazing puzzles every year, and the sacrifices required to make it happen. If you’d like to play along, you can grab all of the required materials for free at:īefore getting into the badge challenge write-up, we would first like to take a moment to thank all those who helped make this possible. It was a great experience, and they were true professionals promoting their craft.If you are still working on the Badge challenge, be warned! Spoilers below! That’s where I earned my HAM radio technician’s license. During the event they proctored exams for the HAM radio licenses. One of my personal highlights of attending offline was the HAM radio village. That’s where I watched people mess with satellites, improve paper airplane designs, and I improved my soldering skills, and created some cool little badges for my sons. I spent most of my time in the hardware hacking village and the aerospace villages. What was really cool to see was the popup villages that often took place in the hallways and open spaces in the ballrooms. In person villages included everything from aerospace research to voting machine hacking, and anything in between. For in person events, the villages spanned across Bally's and Paris, occupying many of the ballrooms. With this being a hybrid conference, some of the villages were open to participation from anyone in person and virtually, or virtually only. I won’t spoil the fun for those who are still doing it, but the more of these you can bring together, the deeper down the rabbit hole you can fall.įor every budding and experienced hacker or security enthusiast, there was a village for you. It was not only a badge, but a puzzle you could solve. Like everything else with DEFCON, there is always another layer to what you see. You could use it as a mini keypad to control hotkeys for your PC or Discord, play games on it, and share the signal with those around you. This badge brought everyone together and helped to embrace the new normal. At first glance it just looks like a macro keyboard, but in reality, it’s much more than that. I was and still am extremely excited about this badge. Now that we have talked about all the admin stuff (boooorrring), let’s move on to the awesome badge provided by MK Factor. (There was no talk or workshop attendance however.) This saved you $250.00 and gave you a chance to wander around and check out the BlackHat Arsenal and Business hall. Thus helping everyone to enjoy the event.ĭEFCON added a nice little bonus for anyone who attended in person this year, in the form of a business pass to BlackHat as well! All anyone who attended in-person had to do was show their DEFCON confirmation to register for the pass. While confined indoors or in close proximity to others (as in “linecon”), I was surprised to see most everyone remained masked up and was respectful of the rules. When it came to COVID protocols, this wasn't the case. One would think that with this being a hacker conference, many would go against authority, rebel, and refuse to follow the rules. Nothing was recorded, no pictures or copies kept, just a quick visual check. They checked that you were indeed yourself, that the name on your ID matched the vaccine card, and if all was good, they gave you a wristband as proof you had been validated. All that happened was when it was your turn, you showed an ID and your COVID vaccination proof to one of the workers. The conference had a third party brought in to perform the validation. Traveling with my medical data and showing it to someone I don't know seemed a bit sketchy to me. Many people had concerns with how vaccination status validation would go. I had planned to spend my morning in line, so it was nice to gain some of the day back to explore and go check out Blackhat (more on that in a minute). I was surprised when the whole process took me less than 30 minutes. I thought it would be even worse this year since we had to take the COVID screening check into account. Like the start of any other DEFCON or hacker conference in general, it all starts with “linecon.” In years past, it’s my understanding that the registration portion for DEFCON often took hours to get through. This was my first chance to get out to “hacker summer camp” and wanted to share my thoughts with you all. I just wanted to take a few minutes to tell everyone about my experience at DEFCON 29. ![]()
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