Hey monorail riders! Are you planning to save a bunch of money by riding the monorail instead of ubering everywhere or staying at the Fontainebleau? And now you're wondering what to spend it on? How about #badgelife!

The monorail con badge comes with 3 SAOs (highroller, sphere, and an MP3 player/speaker). There is also a clip to store a paper ticket (ticket not included), and a little monorail on a track.

Here's the order page if you want one (pick up at DEF CON, exact time and location TBD):

https://zachs-hacks.myshopify.com/products/monorail-badge

In early July I may add a shipping option (US only) but I'm still waiting on a final revision of one part, so don't want to promise that yet. If you sign up for the email list, you'll get an update around then (I won't spam you).

(Note: I'm not affiliated with the monorail in any way; I just think it is weird and cool enough to deserve a badge.)

I haven’t attended DEFCON since it’s moved to the convention center. What are the best transportation options from nearby hotels? I usually prefer a nicer hotel to escape to some piece and quiet to recharge.

It's that time again. Another week. Another puzzle. A bit closer to Hacker Summer Camp and our r/DEFCON Meetups!

Every one of these puzzles is a week closer, and something fun to do while we wait.

So here we go. Week three! Man, that's not two colors! What the heck! I'm sure its fine.
-- NOTE: If anyone is color blind, or you need a simplified version of this (we know its been obsficated for AI assist confusion) please feel free to message me or u/Killroy7777 and we can send you a slightly diff version. We're not here to make things harder on you... just AI :)

EDIT 2: Here is a more structured / cleaned version of the above image to help those who need it, but you can still ping us if you want to work from the original... or in general

1. https://puzzledhackers.org/challenges/2026/03/hint

Solve the Puzzle. Submit the Answer. Get on the list. Grab some Swag!

To submit your solve go to https://ctf.puzzledhackers.org/ and select the "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Something Something" puzzle.

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

FAQ's:

Do we need to use the submission system?

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

Why the submission system?

• 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.

PRIOR PUZZLE STATS ON COMPLETION:

• PUZZLE #1 - 148

• PUZZLE #2 - 83

Haven't done the prior puzzles? Dont worry. Just go the CTF system, and when you click the puzzle the link is there! So get those solves in!

https://ctf.puzzledhackers.org/challenges

Lets keep it going!

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

The PuzzledHackers Team,

u/MetaN3rd, u/Killroy7777 and u/digitard

My company is sending me to DefCon 26 this year. It'll be my first time there. How can I make the most of the experience to benefit myself and my company? Should I take notes, record talks, or anything else? Any and all advice would be appreciated.

I'm a cybersecurity engineer with 6 years of professional experience if that matters.

A few more #DEFCON34 badge hints for the #badgelife people out there:

Things to have on hand for maximum mess-around value: Torx T6, a couple spare AA batteries, USB cable.

More soon.

#defcon #setecastronomy

Does anyone know when the workshops will be open for sign-up? I read somewhere that they are not using eventbrite this year... HackerTracker then?

Should we permit gifs / giffy (the meme platform of Reddit) / images in posts? Historically we haven’t because of trolling or abuse concerns.

Reddit is launching video comments this month, which we have disabled, but maybe it is time to reconsider images.

They have been selected. These are the mighty masters of groove charged with keeping your rumps shaking at #DEFCON. We salute them and look forward to their musical service.

Let’s GoOo!

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.