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This article is about the computer security convention. For other uses, see Defcon (disambiguation).
DEF CON
StatusActive
GenreSecurity Conference, Hacker Conference
FrequencyAnnual
VenueVaries
Location(s)Las Vegas, Nevada
CountryUnited States
Years active31
InauguratedJune 9, 1993 (1993-06-09)[1]
FounderJeff Moss
Previous eventAugust 8-11, 2024
Next eventAugust 7-10, 2025
AttendanceOver 30,000
Websitedefcon.org
Part of a series on
Computer hacking
History
Hacker culture and ethic
Conferences
Computer crime
Hacking tools
Practice sites
Malware
Computer security
Groups
Publications

DEF CON (also written as DEFCON, Defcon, or DC) is a hacker convention held annually in at least Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked". The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer and hacking-related subjects, as well as cyber-security challenges and competitions (known as hacking wargames). Contests held during the event are extremely varied and can range from creating the longest Wi-Fi connection to finding the most effective way to cool a beer in the Nevada heat.[2]

Other contests, past and present, include lockpicking, robotics-related contests, art, slogan, coffee wars, scavenger hunt, and Capture the Flag. Capture the Flag (CTF) is perhaps the best known of these contests and is a hacking competition where teams of hackers attempt to attack and defend computers and networks using software and network structures. CTF has been emulated at other hacking conferences as well as in academic and military contexts (as red team exercises).

Federal law enforcement agents from the FBI, DoD, United States Postal Inspection Service, DHS (via CISA) and other agencies regularly attend DEF CON.[3][4] Some have considered DEF CON to be the "world's largest" hacker conference given its attendee size and the number of other conferences modeling themselves after it.

History

DEF CON was founded in 1993, by then 18-year-old Jeff Moss as a farewell party for his friend, a fellow hacker and member of "Platinum Net", a FidoNet protocol based hacking network from Canada.[5] The party was planned for Las Vegas a few days before his friend was to leave the United States, because his father had accepted employment out of the country. However, his friend's father left early, taking his friend along, so Jeff was left alone with the entire party planned. Jeff decided to invite all his hacker friends to go to Las Vegas with him and have the party with them instead. Hacker friends from far and wide got together and laid the foundation for DEF CON, with roughly 100 people in attendance.

The term DEF CON comes from the movie WarGames, referencing the U.S. Armed Forces defense readiness condition ( DEF CON). In the movie, Las Vegas was selected as a nuclear target, and since the event was being hosted in Las Vegas, it occurred to Jeff Moss to name the convention DEF CON. However, to a lesser extent, CON also stands for convention and DEF is taken from the letters on the number 3 on a telephone keypad, a reference to phreakers.[6] The official name of the conference includes a space in-between DEF and CON.

Though intended to be a one-time event, Moss received overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees, and decided to host the event for a second year at their urging. The event's attendance nearly doubled the second year, and has enjoyed continued success.[7] In 2019, an estimated 30,000 people attended DEF CON 27.[8]

For DEF CON's 20th Anniversary, a film was commissioned entitled DEF CON: The Documentary.[9] The film follows the four days of the conference, events and people (attendees and staff), and covers history and philosophy behind DEF CON's success and unique experiences.

In January 2018, the DEF CON China Beta event was announced. The conference was held May 11–13, 2018 in Beijing, and marked DEF CON's first conference outside the United States. The second annual DEF CON China was canceled due to concerns related to COVID-19.[10]

In 2020, due to safety concerns over COVID-19 the DEF CON 28 in-person Las Vegas event was cancelled[11] and replaced with DEF CON Safe Mode,[12] a virtual event planned for the same August 6–9 dates as DC 28.

In 2021, DEF CON 29 was held on August 5–8 in-person in Las Vegas and virtually (via Twitch and Discord). In-person attendees were required to wear masks in conference areas and to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Attendees with verified vaccine records (verified by a 3rd party) were given a wristband which was required for entry into the conference areas.[13]

Components

Handles

Attendees at DEF CON and other Hacker conferences often utilize an alias or "handle" at conferences. This is in keeping with the hacker community's desire for anonymity. Some known handles include DEF CON founder Jeff Moss' handle of "Dark Tangent". A notable event at DEF CON is DEF CON 101 which starts off the conference and may offer the opportunity for an individual to come up on stage and be assigned a handle by a number of members of the community.

Badges

Multiple, electronic and non-electronic, DEF CON human badges along with other conference badges.

A notable part of DEF CON is the conference badge, which identifies attendees and ensures attendees can access conference events and activities. The DEF CON badge has historically been notable because of its changing nature, sometimes being an electronic badge (PCB), with LEDs, or sometimes being a non-electronic badge such as a vinyl record. Conference badges often contain challenges or callbacks to hacker or other technology history, such as the usage of the Konami Code in the DEF CON 24 badge, or the DEF CON 25 badge reverting to the look of the DEF CON 1 badge. DEF CON Badges do not (generally) identify attendees by name; however, the badges are used to differentiate attendees from others. One way of doing this has been to have different badges, a general conference attendee (HUMAN) badge, a Staff member (GOON), Vendor, Speaker, Press, and other badges. In addition, individuals and organizations have begun creating their own badges in what has become known as badgelife. These badges may be purchased in many cases, or earned at the conference by completing challenges or events. Some badges may give the holder access to after hours events at the conference. In 2018, the evolution of this came with what was termed "shitty addon's" or SAOs. These were miniature (usually) PCBs that connected to the official and other badges that may extend functionality or were just collected.[14][15]

Villages

Villages are dedicated spaces arranged around a specific topic. Villages may be considered mini conferences within the con, with many holding their own independent talks as well as hands-on activities such as CTFs, or labs. Some villages include Aerospace Village, Car Hacking Village, IoT Village, Recon, Biohacking, lockpicking, ham radio, and the well known Social Engineering and vote hacking villages. In 2018 the vote hacking village gained media attention due to concerns about US election systems security vulnerabilities.[16][17]

Internal Conferences

DEF CON has its own cultural underground which results in individuals wanting to create their own meetups or "cons" within DEF CON. These may be actual formal meetups or may be informal. Well known cons are:

  • Queercon, a meetup of LGBTQ community.
  • Linecon, any long line has the potential to turn into a con.
  • QuietCon, a meetup to hang out or talk quietly away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the conference attendees.

Workshops

Workshops are dedicated classes on various topics related to information security and related topics. Historical workshops have been held on topics such as Digital Forensics investigation, hacking IoT devices, playing with RFID, fuzzing and attacking smart devices.

Fundraising

Since DEF CON 11, fundraisers have been conducted for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The first fundraiser was a dunk tank and was an "official" event. The EFF now has an event named "The Summit" hosted by the Vegas 2.0 crew that is an open event and fundraiser. DEF CON 18 (2010) hosted a new fundraiser called MohawkCon.

Contests

Within DEF CON there are many contests and events which range from, Capture the Flag, Hacker Jeopardy,[18] Scavenger Hunt,[19] Capture the Packet, Crash and Compile,[20] and Hackfortress[21] to name a few.

Black Badge

The Black Badge is the highest award DEF CON gives to contest winners of certain events. Capture the flag (CTF) winners sometimes earn these, as well as Hacker Jeopardy winners. The contests that are awarded Black Badges vary from year to year, and a Black Badge allows free entrance to DEF CON for life, potentially a value of thousands of dollars.[22]

In April 2017, a DEF CON Black Badge was featured in an exhibit[23] in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History entitled "Innovations in Defense: Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Cybersecurity". The badge belongs to ForAllSecure's Mayhem Cyber Reasoning System,[24] the winner of the DARPA 2016 Cyber Grand Challenge at DEF CON 24 and the first non-human entity ever to earn a Black Badge.

Capture the flag

The first instance of the DEF CON CTF was held in 1996, at the 4th DEF CON, and has been held since then every year.[25] It's one of the few CTF in the attack/defense format. The prize of the winning team is a couple of black badges.[26]

Capture the Flag Timeline [27][26]
Year DEF CON Competing Teams Organizers Architecture Platform Winning Team
1996 4 Goons AJ Reznor
1997 5 Goons AJ Reznor
1998 6 Goons SNI
1999 7 Goons Ghetto Hackers
2000 8 Goons Ghetto Hackers
2001 9 Goons Multiple Ghetto Hackers & digirev
2002 10 Ghetto Hackers Redhat 6.2 Digital Revelation
2003 11 8 Ghetto Hackers OpenBSD Anomaly
2004 12 8 Ghetto Hackers i386 Windows sk3wl0fr00t
2005 13 8 Kenshoto i386 FreeBSD 5.4 shellphish
2006 14 8 Kenshoto i386 Solaris 10 1@stplace
2007 15 8 Kenshoto i386 FreeBSD 1@stplace
2008 16 8 Kenshoto i386 FreeBSD Sk3wl of Root
2009 17 9 DDTEK i386 FreeBSD VedaGodz[28]
2010 18 12 DDTEK i386 FreeBSD & Debian ACME Pharm[29]
2011 19 12 DDTEK i386 FreeBSD European Nopsleders[30]
2012 20 20 DDTEK i386 FreeBSD Samurai
2013 21 20 Legitimate Business Syndicate armv7 Linux Plaid Parliament of Pwning
2014 22 20 Legitimate Business Syndicate armv7 & i386 Linux Plaid Parliament of Pwning
2015 23 15 Legitimate Business Syndicate MIPS, x86 & armv7 Linux DEFKOR
2016 24 15 Legitimate Business Syndicate i386 DECREE Plaid Parliament of Pwning
2017 25 15 Legitimate Business Syndicate cLEMENCy cLEMENCy Plaid Parliament of Pwning
2018 26 24 Order Of the Overflow MIPS, x86 & armv7 Linux DEFKOR00T[31]
2019 27 16 Order Of the Overflow x86, arm64, esoteric Linux, iOS, Xbox Plaid Parliament of Pwning[32]
2020 28 16 Order Of the Overflow x86, esoteric Linux A*0*E[33]
2021 29 16 Order Of the Overflow x86, microengine Linux Katzebin[34]
2022 30 16 Nautilus Institute mixed Maple Mallard Magistrates[35]
2023 31 12 Nautilus Institute mixed Maple Mallard Magistrates[36]
2024 32 12 Nautilus Institute mixed Maple Mallard Magistrates[37]

Capture the Flag History

In 1996, the first DEF CON CTF was organized, with a couple of servers for participants to hack, and judges to decide if a machine has been hacked, and award points accordingly.[38]

In 2002, the company Immunix took part in the game under the moniker "immunex",[39] to benchmark the security of their Linux-based operating system, with modifications including StackGuard, FormatGuard, OpenWall's non-executable stack, SubDomain (the ancestor of AppArmor), ...[40] Confident in their defense capabilities, they even opened access to their servers to other teams, and even spent some time taunting them. The team got the second place, and all their services deployed on their Immunix stack were never compromised.[41] It was also the first year the contest had an organiser-provided services infrastructure connected to a real-time scoreboard.[42]

In 2003, the game had become so popular that a qualification round was introduced, with the previous winner automatically qualified.[43]

In 2008, the Sk3wl of Root team took advantage of a bug in the game (privilege dropping and forking were inverted), allowing them to have such a massive lead that they spent most of the CTF playing Guitar Hero.[44][45]

In 2009, it was announced[46] that "Diutinus Defense Technology Corp" (DDTEK) would be the new organisers, but nobody knew who they were. It was revealed at the end of the game that the team playing as sk3wl0fr00t was the organizer.[26] "Hacking the top hacker contest seemed like a fun way to introduce ourselves to CTF organization. The yells of "bullshit" from CTF teams during the DEF CON 17 awards ceremony were very gratifying." said vulc@n, a member of DDTEK, on the topic.[26]

In 2011, the team "lollerskaters dropping from roflcopters" used a 0day in FreeBSD (namely CVE-2011-4062[47]) to escape jails, causing havoc in the game's infrastructure.[48]

In 2016, the 15th edition of the CTF was done in partnership with the DARPA, as part of its Cyber Grand Challenge program, where teams wrote autonomous systems to play the game without any human interaction.[49]

In 2017, the Legitimate Business Syndicate came up with their very own CPU architecture called cLEMENCy: a middle-endian with 9 bits bytes CPU. With its specifications released only 24 hours before the beginning of the CTF, it was designed with the explicit goals of both surprising the teams, and leveling the playing field by breaking all their tools.[50]

Groups

DEF CON Groups are worldwide, local chapters of hackers, thinkers, makers and others. DEF CON Groups were started as a splinter off of the 2600 meetup groups because of concerns over politicization. Local DEF CON groups are formed and are posted online.[51] DEF CON Groups are usually identified by the area code of the area where they are located in the US, and by other numbers when outside of the US e.g., DC801, DC201. DEF CON Groups may seek permission to make a logo that includes the official DEF CON logo with approval.

Notable incidents

Following are a list of high-profile issues which have garnered significant media attention.

Year Description
1999 On July 10, 1999, the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective released Back Orifice 2000 (later discovered to be infected with the CIH virus) at DEF CON 7,[52] in what was, at the time, the largest presentation in DEF CON history.
2001 On July 16, 2001, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested the day after DEF CON for writing software to decrypt Adobe's e-book format.[53]
2005 On July 31, 2005, Cisco used legal threats to suppress Mike Lynn from presenting at DEF CON about flaws he had found in the Cisco IOS used on routers.[54]
2007 In August 2007, Michelle Madigan, a reporter for Dateline NBC, attempted to secretly record hackers admitting to crimes at the convention. After being outed by DEF CON founder Jeff Moss during an assembly, she was heckled and chased out of the convention by attendees for her use of covert audio and video recording equipment. DEF CON staff tried to get Madigan to obtain a press pass before the outing happened.[55] A DEF CON source at NBC had tipped off organizers to Madigan's plans.[3]
2008
Main article: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority v. Anderson
MIT students Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa were to present a session entitled "The Anatomy of a Subway Hack: Breaking Crypto RFIDS and Magstripes of Ticketing Systems." The presentation description included the phrase "Want free subway rides for life?" and promised to focus on the Boston T subway.[56] However, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) sued the students and MIT in United States District Court in Massachusetts on August 8, 2008, claiming that the students violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by delivering information to conference attendees that could be used to defraud the MBTA of transit fares.[57][58] The court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the students from disclosing the material for a period of ten days, despite the fact the material had already been disseminated to DEF CON attendees at the start of the show.

In 2008's contest "Race to Zero," contestants submitted a version of given malware which was required to be undetectable by all of the antivirus engines in each round. The contest concept attracted much negative attention.[59][60]

2009 WIRED[61] reported that an ATM kiosk was positioned in the conference center of the Riviera Hotel Casino capturing data from an unknown number of hackers attending the DEF CON hacker conference.
2011 Security company HBGary Federal used legal threats to prevent former CEO Aaron Barr from attending a panel discussion at the conference.[62]
2012 The director of the National Security Agency, Keith B. Alexander, gave the keynote speech.[63] During the question and answers session, the first question for Alexander,[63] fielded by Jeff Moss,[64] was "Does the NSA really keep a file on everyone, and if so, how can I see mine?" Alexander replied "Our job is foreign intelligence" and that "Those who would want to weave the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people, is absolutely false…From my perspective, this is absolute nonsense."[63]

On March 12, 2013, during a United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, Senator Ron Wyden quoted the 2012 DEF CON keynote speech and asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if the U.S. conducted domestic surveillance; Clapper made statements saying that there was no intentional domestic surveillance.[63] In June 2013, NSA surveillance programs which collected data on US citizens, such as PRISM, had been exposed. Andy Greenberg of Forbes said that NSA officials, including Alexander, in the years 2012 and 2013 "publicly denied–often with carefully hedged words–participating in the kind of snooping on Americans that has since become nearly undeniable."[63]

2013 On July 11, 2013, Jeff Moss posted a statement,[65] located on the DEF CON blog, titled "Feds, We Need Some Time Apart". It stated that "I think it would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a 'time-out' and not attend DEF CON this year."[66] This was the first time in the organization's history that it had asked federal authorities not to attend.[65] Actor Will Smith visited the convention to study the DEF CON culture for an upcoming movie role.[67]
2016 On August 4, 2016, DEF CON and DARPA co-hosted the 2016 Cyber Grand Challenge, a first-of-its-kind all-machine hacking tournament. Competing teams had to create a bot capable of handling all aspects of offense and defense with complete autonomy. Seven finalists competed for a US$2M grand prize.[68]

The winner of the Cyber Grand Challenge was "Mayhem", an AI created by ForAllSecure of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[68][69] Mayhem then went on to participate in the previously humans-only DEF CON Capture the Flag Contest,[70] where it finished in last place, despite pulling ahead of human teams often in a contest for which it was not specifically designed.

2017 At the "Voting Machine Village" event, dozens of voting machines brought to the conference were breached.[71]

In September 2017, the Voting Machine Village produced "DEF CON 25 Voting Machine Hacking Village: Report on Cyber Vulnerabilities in US Election Equipment, Databases and Infrastructure" summarizing its findings. The findings were publicly released at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council[72] and the paper went on to win an O'Reilly Defender Research Award.[73]

Marcus Hutchins, better known online by his handle MalwareTech, the 23-year-old British security researcher who was credited with stopping the WannaCry outbreak was arrested by the FBI at the airport preparing to leave the country after attending DEF CON over his alleged involvement with the Kronos banking trojan.[74]

2018 In March 2018, the DEF CON Voting Machine Hacking Village was awarded a Cybersecurity Excellence Award.[75] The award cites both the spurring of a national dialog around securing the US election system and the release of the nation's first cybersecurity election plan.
2020 On May 8, 2020, the DEF CON in-person conference itself was cancelled[76] and virtualized due to COVID-19. DEF CON Safe Mode[77] was held August 6–9 online with a full roster of talks, villages, contests and events.
2024 On February 4, 2024, Cesar's Entertainment cancelled the contract with DEF CON without warning[78] with speculation that a ransomware attack[79] and bomb scare and subsequent evacuation[80] in 2023 were in part to blame. The conference was moved to the Las Vegas Convention Center as a result.

Entertainment references

Venues, dates, and attendance

Each conference venue and date has been extracted from the DEF CON archives for easy reference.[82]

Conference Name Venue Duration Year Attendance
DEF CON 33 Las Vegas Convention Center August 7–10 2025 N/A
DEF CON 32 Las Vegas Convention Center, and The Sahara[83] August 8–11 2024 N/A
DEF CON 31 Caesars Forum, Flamingo, Harrah's Hotel, and Linq Hotel August 10–13 2023 ~25,000[citation needed]
DEF CON 30 Caesars Forum, Flamingo, Harrah's Hotel, and Linq Hotel August 11–14 2022 ~25,000[citation needed]
DEF CON 29 Paris Hotel and Bally's Hotel August 5–8 2021 ~8,700[citation needed]
DEF CON Safe Mode Virtual event August 6–9 2020 N/A
DEF CON 28 Planned Caesars Forum, Harrah's, The Linq, and Flamingo August 6–9 2020 0[84]
DEF CON 27 Paris Hotel, Bally's Hotel, Planet Hollywood, and Flamingo August 8–11 2019 ~30,000[8]
DEF CON China 1.0 751 D-Park May 31–June 2 2019 Unknown
DEF CON 26 Caesars Palace and Flamingo August 9–12 2018 28,000[85]
DEF CON China [Beta] Kuntai Hotel (Beijing) May 11–13 2018 Unknown
DEF CON 25 Caesars Palace July 27–30 2017 25,000[86]
DEF CON 24 Paris Hotel and Bally's Hotel August 4–7 2016 22,000[87]
DEF CON 23 Paris Hotel and Bally's Hotel August 6–9 2015 16,000+[88]
DEF CON 22 Rio Hotel & Casino August 7–10 2014 16,000[89]
DEF CON 21 Rio Hotel & Casino August 1–4 2013 12,000[89]
DEF CON 20 Rio Hotel & Casino July 26–29 2012 Unknown
DEF CON 19 Rio Hotel & Casino August 4–7 2011 Unknown
DEF CON 18 Riviera Hotel & Casino July 30–August 1 2010 Unknown
DEF CON 17 Riviera Hotel & Casino July 30–August 2 2009 Unknown
DEF CON 16 Riviera Hotel & Casino August 8–10 2008 8,000[90]
DEF CON 15 Riviera Hotel & Casino August 3–5 2007 Unknown
DEF CON 14 Riviera Hotel & Casino August 4–6 2006 Unknown
DEF CON 13 Alexis Park Resort July 29–31 2005 Unknown
DEF CON 12 Alexis Park Resort July 30–August 1 2004 Unknown
DEF CON 11 Alexis Park Resort August 1–3 2003 Unknown
DEF CON 10 Alexis Park Resort August 2–4 2002 Unknown
DEF CON 9 Alexis Park Resort July 13–15 2001 Unknown
DEF CON 8 Alexis Park Resort July 28–30 2000 Unknown
DEF CON 7 Alexis Park Resort July 9–11 1999 Unknown
DEF CON 6 Plaza Hotel & Casino July 31–August 2 1998 Unknown
DEF CON 5 Aladdin Hotel & Casino July 11–13 1997 Unknown
DEF CON 4 Monte Carlo Resort and Casino July 26–28 1996 Unknown
DEF CON 3 Tropicana Resort & Casino August 4–6 1995 Unknown
DEF CON 2 Sahara Hotel and Casino July 22–24 1994 ~200
DEF CON 1 Sands Hotel and Casino June 9–11 1993 ~100

See also

References

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Further reading

DEF CON

Multimedia

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEF_CON