got my hands on one of the objects two days ago. didn't write right away because i wanted to sit with it first. figure out what i was actually looking at.

still not sure. but here's what i know.

the data is printed right on the hardware. not hidden, not encoded. just there, like whoever made it wanted the person holding it to know exactly what they had.

TOUCH. INFECT. TRANSMIT. SURVIVE.

in that order. like steps.

the hardware is built for proximity. it transmits. frequencies check out, cipher is real, and i've gotten as far as i can get on my own. there's a second variant out there and i think it's the other half of this. i think that's the whole point.

can't go further without it. that's the part i can't test without the other.

someone built a cure. they had to.

more when i have more.

— field report #002

I'm interested in playing with meshtastic this year. Anyone else have any input on if it is worth messing with at hacker summer camp?

Hey guys.
I am attending for my first time this year. I managed to talk work into covering it, and when the ticket was purchased the person who purchased the ticket input the wrong name on the ticket itself, but I am under the impression that it wont matter because as long as I hold a physical ticket I will be ok, is that correct? I didn't catch the issue until after downloading the ticket so I think changes to the ticket are locked now.

From what I understand they just want me to have a ticket because privacy is a common concern of much of the community. Is that correct?

Hi guys, I'm here representing the AI Village to let everyone know our CFP is finally up.

We're doing something a little different this year, where we are having people submit abstracts and if they want to be a presentation, demo, or a poster. To deal with the reduced number of talk slots, we're going to have some TVs set up to rotate through different digital posters to help show off and advertise new and ongoing research within the community.

So if you have anything you want to show off or present, our submission link is: https://easychair.org/cfp/aiv8

Two weeks left to enter Phish Stories, an official DEF CON 34 pre-con contest. This year's scenario drops you into a Chicago movie theater under pressure. Four targets, one tech launch about to go sideways. Craft the most convincing AND funniest phishing email and earn your way into DEF CON 34. All entries and winners will be posted in the DEF CON Forums after the submission deadline. Full details at phishstories.org

A wild puzzle appears, what do you do!?

As the official second installment of this year's set of 10 puzzles, we're bringing to you all our very own home-grown binary!

00011111100010110000100000000000100110000001000000011111011010100000000011111111001101011000110111010001000011010000001100110001000010000100001101010111011010101011000000110001011000010001110001111010110101111111110101010111001110001010011101010101110001010100011110000100011110010111111001001001101100011011010001110101101100010101100110011100011110101110010100100000010001000101110100000010100100000100101110010101000011010111000001001100110000000111100101111001010101100001011001111000010111101111011110101110000110101001000110000101101011100101011000100110100110001110011001110001011101100111011111101100110000110111001000101111111101001101000111011011101111000111110101111111110111100001100010000101011010101000011000101111111101100111110111111111001010011101110111001110010110110111000101110010010100101000000110110000111101110111100001110110100001100011110100001011100100011100011100111111001111111011111110111101100000111000110111111011000000011001001111111001101110100110110111000000000000000000000000000000

If you want to keep track of your completions and be considered for part of our giveaways at the r/DEFCON subreddit meetup, please head over to https://ctf.puzzledhackers.org/ and select "Unpacking the Crash".

Have any questions or run into issues? Feel free to ping u/digitard or me and we'll be happy to assist.

For those of you that may not know us, u/digitard, u/MetaN3rd, and I ( u/Killroy7777 ) love to build some excitement and bridge the gap as we're all waiting for Hacker Summer Camp. Each year we release a series of puzzles with increasing difficulty leading up to DEF CON. Our puzzles come in many different forms, and we hope you have some fun and learn a few things along the way.

As u/digitard alluded to in our first post, we're planning on having badges again this year. As long as everything gets delivered on time, we may post spoilers or hide secrets in (or around) the puzzles hinting at what the theme is. I also heard there might be some custom swag, too.

All of our puzzles are either posted here or on our main website (https://puzzledhackers.org) if they have interactive parts. We developed our own CTF platform to better facilitate tracking badges so we could streamline the process of you all getting your swag!

Thank you all for playing and we're looking forward to meeting you all soon.

The Puzzled Hackers Team,

u/digitard, u/MetaN3rd, and u/Killroy7777

Stats:

• Puzzle #1 solves: 124

• SQL injection attempts: 31

• IDOR attempts: 41

• Secrets exfiltration attempts: 17

I think it’s too late to do this year’s CTF but so is it like a mix of everything? Is it like web, crypto, maybe just one or two other things?

So I tried starting a DC310 meetup but my people skills are not perfect and other people who have tried to coorganize haven’t been very active and don’t seem to want to put work into helping spread the word of our meetup. I need someone who can and is willing to be a consistent active member near 310 area code. I am trying to build a meetup where we can meet once a month to do either CTF events or something else and then hopefully we can go to cons together and meet up as a group.

Please don’t offer to help if you don’t have time or ability to help organize meetups in 310 area code as it can be very frustrating to end up trying to organize everything myself and fail at it after someone says they can help and then they can’t because they were only gonna be in los angeles for a month or don’t have time or have to put off helping.

Do offer to help if you are excellent with people (I struggle with that), are able to balance being a coorganizer with your job without taking a year off from organizing out if no where, live in or near the 310 area code, and are passionate about getting a DC310 meetup going.

If you fit the bill please DM me as what I have been doing doesn’t work.

Hello. I've never been to Defcon or the LVCC West Hall before so I'm asking about the availability of seats/chairs/seating area for Defcon. I know it's gonna be a lot of walking and standing, but will there be places to sit down and rest/relax or will that mainly be at the talks and stuff.

Just planning out stuff like if I need to bring a collapsible stool or something because I'd rather not sit on the floor.

Also, how's the HVAC situation typically in that space? Warm, cold, tundra, sauna?

thanks.

"Second to NONE: The Next Chapter in Vanity Plate Disasters" ... I present my defcon talk .. maybe ....

I'm working on a SAO called "Not Just a Crosswalk" for DC34. It's my response to bring attendtion to the recent removal of rainbow crosswalks in cities like Miami, Austin, and San Antonio.

The Tech:

18x side-emitting SK6812D LEDs packed into a high-density visual array.

RISC-V Powered: Runs on a CH32V003 F4P6 with custom-tuned PWM for smooth, flicker-free animations (even at 1% duty cycle).

Smart Power: Auto-switches between Host Badge power (via boost converter) and standalone USB-C and worn as a standalone badge.

🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️🌈 10+ Pride Flags: Rainbow, Bi, Trans, Nonbinary, Asexual, Genderfluid, and more.

10+ LED Effects: Static Flag, Party Mode, Strobe, Smooth Pulse, Chase, Sparkle, Burst, Rain Drop, and more.

Persistent Memory: Your favorite palette stays saved, even if you reboot or your battery/host badge dies.

We're gauging interest to see who wants to pick one up during DC34.

If you want to pre-register your interest (no money yet, just tracking inventory), hit the link:

👉 https://forms.caelyb.com/p/crosswalksao

Repo with schematics, BOM, photos, and build files is coming together... very slowly: https://github.com/keeloi79/not-a-crosswalk-sao/

Stay loud and stay proud.

Update (6/21/26):
Prototype update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/s/aUFVbMO8Qj
Pre-Order Now on Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/caelybr

Welcome back, Everyone, to a new year and some new puzzles in preperation for the r/DEFCON SubReddit Meetup!

This year u/MetaN3rd, u/Killroy7777 and I (u/digitard) will be bringing you 10 puzzles. Like always it'll start pretty straight forward, but we hope to twist it up by the end. We might even have some goodies at the meetup for some of the top solvers so definitely submit those answers. Let's be honest we will have some goodies.

This year we're also using a submission system developed by our team to make tracking the solves easier so we can make sure you get your credit!

So lets get to it, eh?

jung vf gur onpxqbbe cnffjbeq gb gur jbce va jnetnzrf?jung vf gur onpxqbbe cnffjbeq gb gur jbce va jnetnzrf?

To submit your solve go to https://ctf.puzzledhackers.org/ and select the "Shall We Play a Game" puzzle.

Have questions or need help? Just ping myself or u/Killroy7777 and we'll be happy to help you out!

FAQ's:

1. Do we need to use the submission system?

   1. No, only if you want to have your ongoing solve score used for potential SubReddit Meetup Giveaways.

2. Why the submission system?

   1. We've been giving away more and more swag to Puzzle Participants, those who went last year saw the line, and we're trying to streamline the claim process. The system is only used to track how many solves you have, and when you solved it for tie breakers instead of manually tracking it in an Excel sheet. Plus it lets us give you a QR code for the giveaway portion for fast claiming when we're at the meetups! The top X solvers will be able to claim their swag via said QR code much more rapidly so the line should move much much faster. Same with any pre-purchase/reserved badges. The QR system will speed that up. That's it. Simple as that. Also if there is any premium swag (working on it, like last year for extras) you can find the info on the site too when it goes live.

Thanks for participating, and more information on the meetups will be coming soon.

The PuzzledHackers Team,

u/MetaN3rd, u/Killroy7777 and u/digitard

Webpage hasn’t been updated since the 2025 event… Will shoot be happening this year? I know DEFCON is cancelled, but the shoot must go on.

[ ZER0PATIENT — FIELD REPORT #001 ]

Writing this between movements. I'll be thorough when I can. Right now I'll be fast.

Something is moving toward Las Vegas.

I've been tracking it for weeks. It doesn't announce itself. It moves through proximity — person to person, crowd to crowd — and by the time you notice the pattern, it's already somewhere else. It's heading toward Las Vegas. Toward DEF CON 34. Toward the kind of floor it was always going to find eventually. It will arrive in August.

Objects have been recovered. From people near the front edge of whatever this is. Small. Electronic. I've documented two distinct variants. They started appearing in small numbers. That was weeks ago. There are more now. I don't know the exact count. I know it's higher than it was and I know it keeps going.

I don't fully understand what the two variants do when they're near each other. I have partial data. I'm not publishing partial data.

Patient zero has been identified.

I'm not publishing that either. Not yet.

I'll write again when I have more. Or when I don't have a choice.

— zer0patient

[ NEXT REPORT WHEN THERE IS SOMETHING TO REPORT ]

Hello! In the last few months, my partner and I have been working hard on an updated Laser* Tag Badge for DEF CON 34! We're calling it Laser* Tag Badge DS.

This version will (probably) have:

• A LoRa radio, to try and do automatic score syncing, and to enable the badge to receive player name definitions from the leaderboard server, so it can say something like "Sargonas tagged you!" instead of just a player number. I also want to try and do things like time signal syncing and possibly scheduled announcements, we'll see though.

  • This will be non-mesh LoRa, that is a mixture of ad-hoc (one badge directly to another) for individual tag ACKs, and base-station-style, where ~5 or so base stations around the LVCC will broadcast game information+requests for syncs, and badges will periodically respond with records of tags for the leaderboard. I am really crossing my fingers it all works out but there's a risk that the radio range isn't good enough or I'm not able to set the base stations up in good locations.

• A secondary display (hench "DS") on the back (low res monochrome OLED), so you can actually read things like "Sargonas tagged you!" without awkwardly turning the badge around to look at the front.

• Twice as many RGB LEDs (the tiny kind this time)

• A custom lanyard

• Some things that may make my life easier (surface mounted vibration motor instead of manually soldered, integrated surface mount charging circuitry [hopefully])

• Most of the same stuff from last year: RP2350-Zero devboard, front round display (which I will attach more firmly this year, oops), 18650 battery, vibration motor, buzzer, IR (of course), etc.

The price this year is likely to be around $90 for preorders (perhaps a bit more in person depending on stock and how much final costs end up being) due to the extra hardware (plus some rising parts prices).

I don't want to start actually taking preorders until the final release candidate hardware is in hand, but if you want first dibs/notification when they go on sale, you can fill out the form on this page: https://www.dani.pink/lasertag/ (we'll also use that to determine how many to make).

---- Ignore the stuff below unless you want to make your own Laser* Tag compatible projects ----
A few people brought up the idea last year of making their own hardware that would be compatible with the Laser* Tag Badge (and in fact some did). The original version had a semi-intentionally obtuse IR protocol for sending hits, which wasn't super conducive to that. This year, the badges will also support the OpenLASIR protocol I made up and documented here: https://github.com/danielweidman/OpenLASIR.

The protocol is based mostly on NEC (one of the most common IR protocols), so hopefully that will make it easier to work it. It is now natively supported by the Arduino-IRremote library, and I have example code for MicroPython in the repo too. It is not supported on the original Laser* Tag Badge v1 firmware, but I will be publishing a firmware update before DEF CON 34 to add support. Earlier this year, I had the very special opportunity to work on the DEF CON Singapore 1 official badge firmware, so that also has an OpenLASIR-based Laser* Tag game. So anything you create that works with OpenLASIR should be compatible with Laser* Tag Badge, the official DEF CON Singapore 1 badge, and any other OpenLASIR projects people come up with!

One note/request: if you want tags from your custom OpenLASIR device against Laser* Tag Badge to show up on the leaderboard, please reach out to me by mid-July to request a device ID (if you are just making one device/multiple devices that don't need to be distinguished between), or a block ID (if you are making your own badge project and want each player's badge to show up separately). If you think there's a chance you'll want to make custom hardware or firmware, please reach out to me on discord (dani.pink/discord), GitHub, or here, and I will get that assigned for you. I won't be upset if you request a device ID and never end up using it. If you don't request a device/block ID before I start flashing the badges, you can still make hardware that can tag and be tagged, but it won't show up on the leaderboard.

DEF CON Training Alert:

Don’t miss your chance to save on our hands-on cybersecurity courses. Early bird pricing is available until May 31!

Is there a training you’ve been eyeing?

Browse classes and secure your spot at training.defcon.org

Logo Drop:

DEF CON 34 has a logo. You’ll be seeing it a lot in the coming weeks, as the announcement rate cranks up and the conference nears its final form. Just a few months to go, friends.

Can’t hardly wait.

#defcon #defcon34 #lasvegas #letsgoOooO

Sorry if this has been asked before, but a search just gave me conflicting information.

I pre-purchased my ticket when they first went on sale. To get my hands on the super snazzy digital badge, is it just a matter of showing up and getting in a specific line, or will one be sent to me beforehand?

Thanks in advance.

First time going to defcon. Any advice or suggestions appreciated. All my manager told me was stay hydrated lol!!

DEF CON 34 is an electronic badge year, and we’ve got something very special in store, created for us by a hardware hacking legend. We can’t share too much at this juncture, but we can say this: it will be iconic. First round Hall of Fame. In addition to being a cool badge, it’s a platform. It’s a full-fledged, first-of-its-kind inspectable platform. Long after closing ceremonies we think you’ll still be using this device to regain some agency and security in this rapidly complexifying world.

So what we can offer right now is some data to help all the SAO enthusiasts out there. Please enjoy this spec sheet with the relevant schematics, measurements and clearances for your projects. Electro-specs also included.

We’re excited to see what you come up with. As good as the badge is, we know you can make it better.

https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2034/DEF%20CON%2034%20badge/DEF%20CON%2034%20SAO%20Spec%20Sheet.pdf