I said this before, but man it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated this blog.
So I figured that in order to keep this blog from going stale (or however one wants to describe it), I’d post an update of my time at DEFCON, better known as “Hacker Summer Camp”.
I got up at 4 AM Eastern in order to get to Logan Airport for 5:30ish to allow me to make it through the security line for my flight (which starts boarding at like… 6:05, but doesn’t leave until just about 7). Hopped on the flight, landed in Vegas around 9:30 AM Pacific. Wandered around the airport for a bit before catching an uber to my hotel (the Linq). Check in wasn’t until 3 PM, so I had to hang around for a bit because the early check-in fee was like…$50. Ended up biting the bullet and checking in early. Hung out in my hotel room for a bit, then grabbed some Dunkin because… of course. After a bit, I took an uber over to Mandalay Bay for the Cloudflare Party. Managed to meet up with some people from w00w00, then headed over to the Venetian for a get together with a ton of w00w00 folks. Hung around there for a bit, finally making the trek back to my hotel room, hitting the hay around 12:30 AM.
First (technically) day of DEFCON. Woke up around 10 AM to get over to the Caesars Forum for registration to get my badge. Hung out around the chillout area for a bit. Then went over to Dunkin (again) to get some food. Hung out around my hotel room for a while, knocked out some achievements/challenges on Halo MCC. Then headed over to the chillout lounge to watch YTCracker, DNoise and Yung Innanet on stage. Managed to run into Yung Innanet at the Linq bar. Think I also may have ran into Nixie Pixel as well at some point earlier that night. After that, headed up to my hotel room to sleep.
First (full) day of DEFCON, walked around the conference space quite a bit (definitely got my steps in) before running into some friends and hung around with them for a bit. Checked out Emma Best and Xan North’s talk “Leak The Planet: Veritatem cognoscere non pereat mundus”, which included a shoutout to Maia Crimew. Checked out the talk from Ionut Cernica, which talked about methods of de-anonymizing TOR hidden services. Hung out around the chillout lounge some more before heading back to my hotel room to try and contribute to my team (Team Hashmob)’s effort in the CMIYC (Crack Me If You Can) contest held by the Password Village. Hung around my hotel room before grabbing some food from Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen (which btw ended up running me about $50 but good stuff nonetheless). Then I made my way over to the conference space for the first night of Hacker Jeopardy. After Hacker Jeopardy was over, I headed back to the Linq for some drinks at the Linq bar before heading to a friends hotel room for a gathering. After hanging out in the hotel room, I went back to my own hotel room to sleep.
Second full day of DEFCON, listened to a talk from Cory Doctorow, Christian Dameff, and Jeff Tully, called “Literal Self-Pwning: Why Patients - and Their Advocates - Should Be Encouraged to Hack, Improve, and Mod Med Tech” that was concerning patients being able to modify their own medical devices to make them work properly/how they want. I then saw a talk entitled “Reversing the Original Xbox Live Protocols” which, as the title suggests, is about reverse engineering the OG Xbox Live Protocols. After that talk, I did a lot of walking around the conference space, grabbing some Panda Express, before heading over to the Cosomopolitan to meet up with a few folks for drinks before heading over to The Palms for a gathering of w00w00 people. At that party, I got to meet security people that I’d only ever seen on twitter/elsewhere, as well as some folks I’d not seen in quite a while (given the pandemic). After heading back to my hotel room, I headed to bed.
Third and final day of DEFCON, woke up and headed over to the Password Village to see the end of the Crack Me If You Can contest, where, as happened last year, Team Hashcat came in first, with Cynosure Prime coming in second, and my team, Team Hashmob, coming in third. It was a valiant fight indeed. Then came closing ceremonies where they announced the dates for next year’s DEFCON: 8/10-8/13, 2023. The cool thing this year though, was that they had an afterparty later that night with a cash bar. Headed off to bed after the afterparty.
Woke up, had breakfast for the last time in the hotel, had lunch over at Mandalay Bay while at a cabana party of sorts. After the cabana party, I headed over to the airport to hang out for a while (I figured I’d rather be super early than to be cutting it close). So, this year, instead of just going for the Thursday to Sunday, I opted to stay the day before to the day after. This lead to the situation I was in, where I ended up taking a late flight home on Monday (11:30 PM Pacific), and didn’t end up getting home until around 11:30 AM Eastern on Tuesday.
All in all, I had a great time out in Vegas this year, and I’m looking forward to next year. I’ll also be heading to CircleCityCon in a few days (well, less than 48 hours since this is going up at like… 1:30 AM on Wednesday). Hope to see folks there.
Shout out to all the folks I ran into while out in Vegas. You know who you are.