They also entice hackers to immerse themselves in learning skills alongside engaged community members, without the legal (or physical) risks associated with hacking an Internet-connected car or medical device. Unaffiliated, limited-edition (and thus exclusive) badges are utilitarian status symbols for the DefCon cognoscenti. So why are hackers bothering to play around with unofficial badges, let alone spending a year to develop them? All your displays are on one chip, and if that chip fails, you’re out of luck.”ĭefCon’s official admissions badge-which each attendee receives, risk-free-includes a hackable puzzle, and there are plenty of cheap Internet of Things devices to hack at the conference and elsewhere. “It’s so great to see so many people get involved,” he says, “But it’s still high-risk. “You’re not going to understand IoT device security just by breaking the software.”-John Adams, lead developer, Ides of DefCon conference badge
2017 DEFCON BADGES ANDROID
Still others were built for specific social groups or other conferences here this week, including QueerCon.įive years ago, the Ninja hacking group’s entry badge for its annual party was the NinjaPhone: a customized version of Android running on an HTC phone on its own cellular network, Ninja Tel.īrandon Creighton, who worked on the Ninja Tel project, says that while device-manufacturing costs have fallen since then, badge projects are still expensive and therefore attract designers who have time and money-or the will to raise it.
Thompson-ified Bender from the Futurama cartoon, and another is inspired by Mr. A classic arcade game badge is shaped like a Hunter S. Another, inspired by Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel The Diamond Age, takes the form of a dragonfly. This year, as in the past, there are at least 10 unofficial badge projects like Ides of DefCon. As they play, they’ll encounter a bevy of Easter eggs and mental puzzles. Win enough battles, and they can climb up 10 increasingly difficult levels. Ides of DefCon badge holders can create their own gladiator character, then battle other badge holders on the conference floor. Each set of components is powered by a rechargeable battery and, through a customized version of open-source development environment ChibiOS, is hackable. In its final form, the Ides of DefCon badges, whose development was partially backed by Avast, sponsor of The Parallax, feature multicolored LEDs, digital-audio playback, 4GB microSD cards, 915MHz radios, tilt sensors, and color touch screens. Yet as he pulled into Vegas on Monday night with little sleep, he noted that his team’s valiant efforts had paid off: They brought with them 92 additional functioning badges. “This is a project that went way too far.” “I’ve spent a year getting into the electronics rathole,” says Adams, who led Twitter’s security team when it was a fledgling service. Players fight each other for points and rank in the Ides of DefCon badge, but embedded puzzles give hackers much more to do.
In just a few days, they cobbled together an electronics lab complete with a high-power microscope and a hot-air station, and worked furiously.
2017 DEFCON BADGES SOFTWARE
More than a third of the 225 badges his team had painstakingly designed and written original software for had arrived from the Texas manufacturer in varying states of dysfunction, owing in no small part to problematic component choices Adams and his team had made.Īfter sending out 94 functioning badges to the Kickstarter supporters who had contributed more than $23,300 to the project, Adams decided to try to fix as many of the broken badges as possible before loading up a rental van with the boxes and heading southeast through the desert to DefCon.
“I expected a 10 percent failure rate,” Adams says, wearily eyeing the boxes.
What might resemble to some a PlayStation Vita console lacking its shiny plastic case is actually a year’s worth of work on the Ides of DefCon, a Roman gladiator-theme fighting game and hackable electronic-badge project for attendees of the 25th annual DefCon, the largest hacker conference in North America, to be held at Caesar’s Palace here this week. LAS VEGAS-John Adams looked more than a little exhausted on Friday evening in San Francisco, as he stared down three large cardboard boxes filled with touch screens, electronics parts, and circuit boards he designed with his hacking partners, Egan Hirvela, Bill Paul, and Matthew Harris.
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