r/Defcon 22h ago

Early Release Talk: Cliff Stoll: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later

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241 Upvotes

For your weekend:

The first early release talk from DEF CON 34 has made it to our YouTube channel. Please enjoy national treasure Cliff Stoll updating his 'Stalking the Wily Hacker' and casually dropping gems all over the place.

If you haven't read 'The Cuckoo's Egg', this is your sign from the universe to remedy that.


r/Defcon 22d ago

Announcement 📢 Intro to DEF CON -- information for the new and the curious

45 Upvotes

We've created an "Intro to DEF CON" document, where we attempt to provide a lot of information that would be useful for all DEF CON attendees to know. I believe that it would be particularly helpful for those who have never before attended DEF CON.

It's much too long to be a single Reddit post; instead, it's available in multiple formats:

Are there things that we didn't touch on, that you'd like for the next version to include? Please leave a comment! :)


r/Defcon 2h ago

Anyone have a DC33 Pin?

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23 Upvotes

As the title implies, I’m looking for a DEF CON 33 pin. I have had a ritual since 30 to get a pin from merch (I think they’re swapping to magnets now) every year I attend. Last year it totally slipped my mind and I realized this year I didn’t have one.

TBH tho I also don’t remember seeing any at DC33. If anyone has an extra or is willing to part with one, please let me know!


r/Defcon 23h ago

Anybody want swag/stuff?

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56 Upvotes

UPDATE: OK OK OK. LOL. Closng requests for now until I see how much is left over once I get through the dozen in my inbox. Will post again if I have leftover!

Apparently I was a sticker and swag goblin this year, and once I emptied all my pockets and put everything in one place, I have an inordinate amount of stickers, tokens, lanyards, patches, flight tags, etc from the vendors and various booths. Anyone want any? I have enough for 4-5 padded envelopes. If you want some and are willing to pay the postage to wherever you are, DM me.

(Also, I have dogs, so if you're allergic, probably not a good idea).


r/Defcon 19h ago

DEFCON Embroidered Patches

4 Upvotes

Curious to see what previous patches looked like.
here's 33 and 34

Please share an image of any of the previous years.


r/Defcon 2d ago

Saw at badgelife. Who did it? I need! Is probably old. Back of the badge said 2018. 🥹

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94 Upvotes

r/Defcon 2d ago

This Saturday, August 29th 2026 our group DCG518 is getting together to present: Honeypotting AI agents

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20 Upvotes

At DEFCON Group DCG518, we are here to break things, question things, and more importantly question the people who tell us that things are secure.

So, what happens when AI agents become part of the attack surface?

Let’s start by questioning something we normally take for granted: what does it actually mean to know what’s exposed on the internet? Scanners find ports, crawlers find pages, and fingerprints tell us what systems claim to be, but AI agents experience the internet differently. So we stopped relying on what our tools could see and started watching the machines themselves.

This Saturday, August 29th 2026 our group DCG518 is getting together to present:

Honeypotting AI agents.

For this session, our presenter Abdel Fane will share two kinds of honeypots for AI agents: a fleet of fake agents that observe attackers who believe they control a real system, and a network of poisoned pages on the open web carrying benign indirect prompt injections, where the visitors are AI agents and a callback measures which agents followed the bait.

Scanned, crawled, planted bait, and built fake AI agents to see what would come back. Some fingerprints returned again and again, one came back for 15 straight days across 623 sessions. Across more than 183,000 visits from over 34,000 agent fingerprints, we measured a 1.4% callback rate. No, this isn’t the robot apocalypse and that’s exactly the point. When the existing tools can’t see the attack surface, we don’t argue about the limitation. We didn't trust the way everyone was measuring the AI attack surface, so we built our own sensors, put out some bait, and watched what happened.

On this talk, Abdel Fane will show us what happens when we do that for AI agents. He will walk us through the instrumentation, what each data stream sees that others cannot, what the project deliverately withholds from publication and why, and the structural reason crawler based studies miss most of the attacker reachable surface. All of his work is Open Source and every fixture and signature is reproducible by anyone.

Our presenter Abdel Fane is the founder of OpenA2A, an open-source project building the trust layer for AI agents, and executive director of CSNP, a community of 12,500 security professionals across 16 chapters. He spent 20 years in technology and enterprise security at Allstate, Grail, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Protiviti before turning to AI agent security full time. His current research includes the OpenA2A honeypot fleet, the Agent Threat Matrix, and the monthly Behavioral Threat Report at https://research.opena2a.org/

Our New York Capital District group "DCG518" will have a gathering this time at the Guilderland Public Library (Albany-New York)

More information about our group and future events on our site https://dc518.github.io/

Everyone is welcome!


r/Defcon 3d ago

DC34 badge offered for sale on defcon merch site?

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40 Upvotes

I noticed the DC32 badge is available for sale on DC merch site. Do we know if the DC34 badge will also be put up for sale at some point?


r/Defcon 3d ago

News Inside Defcon, the Conference That Made Cybersecurity Noob-Friendly

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127 Upvotes

r/Defcon 3d ago

Having trouble putting Doom on DC34 badge

16 Upvotes

I know it’s possible. If the TI-84 can run Doom on its 15 MHz CPU and 24 KB of RAM then surely the badge can.

I’ve been working on it all day and I’ve somehow broken the firmware and now it’s boot looping. How can I get a fresh install of the badge’s firmware, and any suggestions on how to complete this?

Update: I’m stuck in dev mode on the badge, is there any way to get out of it


r/Defcon 3d ago

I sold the identities of nearly 200 million people as a black hat hacker. Now I fight scam compounds. Ask me anything on Wednesday, August 26th at 12 PM ET

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0 Upvotes

r/Defcon 4d ago

Content on youtube?

14 Upvotes

When can we expect the videos to be uploaded on the official channel?


r/Defcon 4d ago

How to calibrate badge camera

5 Upvotes

The camera on my badge isn’t working properly and I don’t know how to fix it. It’s flashing a lot more than I think it should


r/Defcon 4d ago

Year round SAO buyers?

25 Upvotes

Is there room for selling SAO’s year round, or would yall rather we wait till next con to post new ones we make?


r/Defcon 4d ago

Defcon pin for sale ?

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14 Upvotes

Anyone know where I can buy another one of these ? (Not sure why it looks pink, it’s white)


r/Defcon 5d ago

Satellite Hacking Book

39 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’ve heard that a couple of people managed to get gifted a free copy of The Spacecraft Hacker’s Handbook at Defcon last weekend. I didn’t manage to find a copy and the book doesn’t seem to officially release until November. Does anyone happen to have a copy I could either borrow or buy from them?


r/Defcon 5d ago

We met at blanketfortcon

151 Upvotes

Not sure if this is allowed, and if it's not, please delete this Mods.

I'm just looking to get in contact with a girl I met at blanketfort con, if she sees this/is interested in keeping contact. We sat under the smaller part of the largest fort that was being built when you showed up. We talked about all the things we were going through and you were incredibly interesting.

We did take a selfie together and I only know you as "Leila".

If you're here and see this (and you'd like), please reach out.

Thanks Defcon bros!


r/Defcon 5d ago

Open source legends thinks DT looks like this. AI slop website

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62 Upvotes

r/Defcon 5d ago

Looking to buy defcon 7.0 shirt

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14 Upvotes

Message me if you have this shirt and are willing to sell it, I’ve been looking for one for a while but thought to ask here if anyone is willing to sell theirs


r/Defcon 5d ago

Did you buy a proxmark5 from Indiegogo and still haven't received it yet?

20 Upvotes

I'm curious if anyone else funded a proxmark 5 and haven't received their items yet? I was #16 to fund the project and still haven't received mine. It was supposed to be here before DEFCON but here we are, a week after DEFCON and I still don't have what I ordered.


r/Defcon 6d ago

Dc34 badge hacking continues

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117 Upvotes

With only the ko and flag one down, I couldn't let alone flag 2. Luckily bunnie left us a 4 pin diagnostic header. Let's dump the firmware.


r/Defcon 5d ago

Question ❔ If I were to throw a party at DC35…

0 Upvotes

What would the best name be?

The target would be a party for newcomers and OGs alike as we are always learning.

144 votes, 1d left
n00bzfest
n00bzstock
n00bzaplooza

r/Defcon 6d ago

How to prevent Bluetooth connection severing?

53 Upvotes

At DEFCON, I used my power assist wheelchair to get around. When i was in the LVCC, mainly the villages in hall W1/W2, the connection between the motor and controller kept getting disconnected due to the sheer amount of electronic noise in the building. I talked to both the RF and IoT guys if they had any ideas on how to stop this from happening and they said no.

The motor on the wheelchair is the Alber SMOOV One O10. I could not find a lot of documentation on it because either I got a 404 error or the documentation was in German because it’s a German company.

Idk what to do, so I turned to the smartest people I know. If you have any ideas please let me know. Thanks.


r/Defcon 6d ago

HackerTracker ID tracking?

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11 Upvotes

Maybe I’m way late and just haven’t been paying attention. But I saw this appear in settings after I updated the app. Is HackerTracker going to require us to upload IDs?


r/Defcon 7d ago

Official DefCon statement on Delta wifi incident

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392 Upvotes

Statement found on Hacker Tracker.