The spirit of badgelife at DEF CON - and the powerful pull of the blinkenlights.

#defcon #badgleife #defcon29

#defcon29 live presentations are online :

https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PL9fPq3eQfaaAB3zbeO_bx7DV9tr-mMKXw

#infosec #security #hacking

☠️ #DEFCON29 -ko bideoak YouTube -tik kanpo igotzen ari dira honako estekan:

➡️ https://htp.live/accounts/htplive/videos

Ez litzateke lehenengo aldia YouTube -k zenbait eduki ezabatzen dituela.

So, #defcon29 was fun, though not as fun as it was in years past.

Let’s start with the bad:

• Social events were fun, but I barely knew anyone. I didn’t really have a lot in common with those I spoke with. Meanwhile, others with noxious personalities marked me as one of the “cool ones” (ha!) and kept attaching themselves to me. ugh.
• Most of the talks and villages were virtual, which would be cool, except 1) my burner laptop’s speakers weren’t working for some reason and 2) my friend/roommate didn’t want to “be on the computer all the time”, which limited what I could really watch and made me feel like I was wasting my time onsite. I did go to one of the few villages and participated in a CTF, so that was good.
• Vegas has become super expensive. Food and drink was around double the price they used to be. Think $8-12 for a can of Blue Moon which is outrageous. $20 a head for eating at the food court, FFS. My friends dragged me all over the Strip to try to find a place to eat, which meant getting food took 90 minutes to 2 hours on average.
• The Gothcon meetup was a flop, IMO. Few people I really knew showed up, the other people kept leaving, and the DJ bailed after the first hour. The person who took over played music that was decidedly not goth, and caused the goth people I liked hanging out with to leave. Meanwhile, the noxious (somewhat not goth) person from earlier basically took over the room with his friends. But they also brought beer, so people overlooked it.
• There was one incident in the Gothcon room where they played “WAP” (seriously), but then stopped because that wasn’t goth music, and a woman got entitled and bitched to everyone within earshot about the DJ “cockblocking” her; she was trying to rally her friends to make the DJ play it again for her. UGH.
• I missed a lot of people this year, which sucked.

The good:

• The badges were good. I managed to score one for free, which was awesome. The official badge this year was cool, and looks pretty useful post-con, as opposed to just being a bunch of blinky lights.
• I did make some new friends, though no real permanent bonds.
• The hackers.town meetup was pretty cool, thanks to @thegibson for putting that on. I enjoyed myself there.
• The talks I did see were interesting. One was bout vulns in Dell BIOS update systems (coreboot anyone?) and another was about getting elevated permissions in G Suite, which was pretty nice.
• After the Gothcon party, I went down to the official #defcon party to dance and maybe salvage my evening, and someone had brought a modular synthesizer which I had a lot of fun playing with. And it was a nice social thing in and of itself, which people coming to hang out.

Overall, Defcon 29 was a mixed experience. Most of that, I think, is the post-pandemic crappiness, from the super-inflated prices to the lack of people to the hybrid events. I hope that next year, Defcon 30, returns to its wild, hacky, incredible self.

Hack The Planet.