Recent News For DEF CON 18

DEF CON 18 Archive Page is Live!

The DEF CON 18 Archive Page is up and running! Currently, we have all of the presentation slides, white papers and extras posted, as well as the DEF CON 18 Program in pdf format! Coming in the next week or so we'll have contest results, press, and even a few early release videos! So check it out and begin reliving the glory that was DEF CON 18!

DEF CON 18 Post Con Update

DEF CON 18 was a resounding success! With more contests, events, attendance and talks, this year's show was a fitting end to our years at the Riviera! We'd like to thank the Riv for working with and hosting us for 5 awesome years! We'd also like to thank all the folks who sacrificed time, effort, and resources to contribute to the hacking community, as well as a huge thank you to all the attendees for showing up and learning, growing and participating in all this con has to offer!



We've all had a chance to wind down decompress from all the excitement of DEF CON 18, and all of the results, press, photos, updated materials and other content is rolling in. Starting in the next couple of days and through the next few weeks, we'll be posting all of this info for everyone to enjoy, reflect upon, and learn from. Keep your eyes on defcon.org, the DEF CON RSS feed, our Twitter and Facebook for all the latest updates from the show!

Be the Match at DEF CON

Be The Match offers the unique opportunity for you to give a life-saving marrow transplant to someone in need. Thousands of patients with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases depend on the Be The Match Registry, the largest and most diverse registry in the worlds, to find a life-saving donor. The more potential donors that step forward, more resources are available to patients and more lives can be saved.



Description of the donor recruitment drive:

Be The Match will have a booth at DefCon 18 where individuals can register to be part of the Be The Match Registry. All they need to be is between the ages of 18 and 60, meet the health guidelines and be willing to donate to ANY patient in need. At the recruitment drive, you will fill out a consent form with contact information and a short medical evaluation. You will receive more information about what it means to be a donor and then you will swab the inside of your cheeks. Your tissue type will be listed in the Be The Match Registry until your 61st Birthday. If you are a match for someone in need, then you will be contacted for donation.

DEF CON 18 SECURE WIFI

This year we are offering 802.1x/WPA-encrypted wireless access for Internet access. In order to access the "DefCon-Secure" wireless network, you will need to create login information for yourself. We have setup a self-registration website.



https://wifireg.defcon.org



Go to this site to register a username & password.

You can hit it from your phone, WWAN, or the open DefCon wireless.



We have also included a copy of the SecureTrust CA root certificate in case your device does not have it in its default certificate trust chain (many systems do, some do not).



SSID: DefCon-Secure

or DefCon-SecureA for 5.0GHz devices (iPad, newer Macbooks)



Network Authentication: WPA2

Data encryption: TKIP or AES

Authentication EAP Type: PEAP

Authentication Mechanism: EAP-MSCHAP v2

Social-Engineer.Org CTF Update – Awareness Abounds

Check out the update on social-engineer.org

The Heat is On!

There's a ton happening leading up to DEF CON 18 in just twelve more days!



The Mystery Challenge is heating up! Check out the Mystery Challenge forum for the latest hijinks!



We have some bad news, unfortunately the Geo Challenge will not be happening this year. You can read more about this on the Geo Challenge forum. Our sympathy goes out to the organizers for what promised to be a great contest. Definitely look for it next year!



There are some exciting new offerings that have surfaced recently! Among them are:



Dark Tangent is busting out the Tamper Evident Contest, in which you debunk the phrase "Impossible to reseal or re-use", and document how you did it!



The Backdoor Hiding Contest, in which you test your skills at hiding and finding backdoors.



Capture the Packet is a cool new network scavenger hunt. Look for clues, solve puzzles and win prizes!



Crack Me If You Can: 53,000 password hashes, 48 hours, nuff said!



PCB PWNage is a mini contest from the Hardware Hacking Village to find out who can design the coolest PCB!



The Twitter Hunt: Follow @TheSuggmeister and watch for the clues that lead to prizes!



For all the latest info on contests and events at this year's DEF CON, check out the DEF CON Forums!

DEF CON 18 Artwork Contest Winners!

Congratulations to the Winners of the DEF CON 18 Artwork Contest! We had a bunch of great entries this year, But we could only pick a few!



First Place and People's Choice vote win goes to "18 & Legal" by Mar! (Pictured above)



Second place goes to "DEF CON Boy" by oshu!







Third Goes to "Her" by emtag!







Congrats to all the winners and a big thanks to all who entered! To view and download all the wallpapers from this year's contest got to the DEF CON 18 Artwork Contest Public Gallery!

Artist pages are live!

You can now view all the bios and samples from the killer line-up of artists performing at DEF CON this year! Check them out on the Entertainment page.

DEF CON 18 Speaking Schedule is Live!

Do we need to say much more than that? Check out the DEF CON 18 Speaking Schedule.

The DC18 Speaker List is Still Growing!

Here's another twenty-four hot-n-fresh new DEF CON talks. Feast.



Exploitable Assumptions Workshop

Joe "Crazy" Foley, Eric "Unlocked" Schmiedl, Zoz



The Law of Laptop Search and Seizure

Jennifer Granick, Kevin Bankston, Marcia Hofmann, Kurt Opsahl



Advanced Format String Attacks

Paul Haas, feakk



Tales from the Crypto

G. Mark Hardy



Decoding reCAPTCHA

Chad Houck



0box Analyzer: AfterDark Runtime Forensics for Automated Malware Analysis and Clustering

Wayne Huang, Jeremy Chiu



Hardware Hacking for Software Guys

Dave King



These Aren't the Permissions You're Looking For

Anthony Lineberry, Tim Wyatt, David Richardson, Sr.



Multiplayer Metasploit: Tag-Team Penetration and Information Gathering

Ryan Linn



App Attack: Surviving the Mobile Application Explosion

Kevin Mahaffey, John Hering



Searching for Malware: A Review of Attackers’ Use of Search Engines to Lure Victims

Dave Maynor, Dr. Paul Q. Judge



Getting Social with the Smart Grid

Justin Morehouse, Tony Flick



Electronic Weaponry or How to Rule the World While Shopping at Radio Shack

Timothy "Mage" Otto



WiMAX Hacking 2010

Pierce, Goldy, aSmig



Industrial Cyber Security

Wade Polk, Paul Malkewicz, J.Novak



Improving Antivirus Scanner Accuracy with Hypervisor Based Analysis

Danny Quist



Search & Seizure & Golfballs

Jim Rennie, Eric Rachner



pyREtic - In-memory Reverse Engineering for Obfuscated Python Bytecode

Rich Smith



Stratagem 1 - Deceiving the Heavens

to Cross the Sea

Jayson E. Street



Breaking WPA-TKIP: Decrypting All Traffic

Mathy Vanhoef



Go Go Gadget Python! : Introduction to Hardware Hacking

Nick Waite, Furkan Cayci



The Night The Lights Went Out In Vegas: Demystifying Smartmeter Networks

Barrett Weisshaar, Garret Picchioni



Panels



PCI, Compromising Controls and Compromising Security

Jack Daniel, Joshua Corman, Dave Shackleford, Anton Chuvakin, Martin McKeay, Alex Hutton, James Arlen



Meet the EFF

Kurt Opsahl, Eva Galperin, Kevin Bankston, Jennifer Granick, Marcia Hofmann,





That's Right. More Talks Posted.

Here's a new list of speaker adds You're probably not even finished absorbing the last one. That's just how we do. Deal with it.



Mobile Privacy: Tor on the iPhone and Other Unusual Devices

Marco Bonetti, sid77



Who Cares About IPv6?

Sam Bowne



masSEXploitation

Michael Brooks



Google Toolbar: The NARC Within

Jeff Bryner



WRT54-TM, Media Center and Network Sniffer

John A. Colley



IPv6: No Longer Optional

John Curran



Function Hooking for Mac OSX and Linux

Joe Damato



Breaking Bluetooth By Being Bored

JP Dunning



An Observatory for the SSLiverse

Peter Eckersley, Jesse Burns



How Unique Is Your Browser?

Peter Eckersley



Hacker Community (around) the Corporate World - Part II

Luiz "effffn" Eduardo



Be A Mentor!

Marisa Fagen



The Anatomy of Drug Testing

Jimi Fiekert



FOE‚ The release of Feed Over Email, a Solution to Feed Controversial News to Censored Countries.

Sho Ho



Exploiting Digital Cameras.

Oren Isacson, Alfredo Ortega



How I Met Your Girlfriend

Samy Kamkar



Bypassing Smart-card Authentication and Blocking Debiting: Vulnerabilities in Atmel Cryptomemory-based Stored-value Systems

Jonathan Lee, Neil Pahl



We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges: Hacking Electronic Door Access Controllers

Shawn Merdinger



Letting the Air Out of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems

Mike Metzger



Open Source Framework for Advanced Intrusion Detection Solutions

Patrick Mullen, Ryan Pentney



Antique Exploitation (aka Terminator 3: Point One One for Workgroups)

Jon Oberheide



Build Your Own Security Operations Center for Little or No Money.

Josh Pyorre



Operating System Fingerprinting for Virtual Machines

Nguyen Anh Quynh



Lord of the Bing: Taking Back Search Engine Hacking from Google and Bing

Rob Ragan, Francis Brown



Social Networking Special Ops: Extending Data Visualization Tools for Faster Pwnage

The Suggmeister



Getting Root: Remote Viewing, Non-local Consciousness, Big Picture Hacking, and Knowing Who You Are

Richard Thieme



INSECURITY ENGINEERING OF PHYSICAL SECURITY SYSTEMS: Locks, Lies, and Videotape

Marc Weber Tobias, Tobias Bluzmanis, Matt Fiddler



Build your own UAV 2.0 - Wireless Mayhem from the Heavens!

Michael Weigand, Renderman, Mike Kershaw



Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit

Scott Wolchok





And the Talks Keep Coming!

We're working feverishly to get the talks finalized and posted - here's the most recent batch. Keep your eye on this space for piping hot update goodness.



WPA Too!

Md Sohail Ahmad



Evilgrade, "You Still Have Pending Upgrades?"

Francisco Amato



Exploitation on ARM - Technique and Bypassing Defense Mechanism

Itzhak "Zuk" Avraham



Resilient Botnet Command and Control with Tor

Dennis Brown



Open Public Sensors and Trend Monitoring

Daniel Burroughs



Bad Memories

Elie Burzstein, Baptiste Gourdin, Gustav Rydstedt



Kartograph : Finding a Needle in a Haystack or How to Apply Reverse Engineering Techniques to Cheat at Video Games.

Elie Burzstein, Jocelyn Lagarenne, Dan Boneh



Token Kidnapping's Revenge

Cesar Cerrudo



Hacking Facebook Privacy

Chris Conley



Physical Security : You're Doing It Wrong!

A.P. Delchi



Hacking with Hardware: Introducing the Universal RF Usb Keboard Emulation Device - URFUKED

Monta Elkins



Trolling Reverse-Engineers with Math: Ness... It hurts...

frank^2



Mastering the Nmap Scripting Engine

Fyodor, David Fifield



Live Fire Exercise: Baltic Cyber Shield 2010

Kenneth Geers



Making the DEFCON 18 Badge

Joe "Kingpin" Grand



Legal Developments in Hardware Hacking

Jennifer Granick. Matt Zimmerman



How To Get Your FBI File (and Other Information You Want From the Federal Government)

Marcia Hoffman



The Chinese Cyber Army - An Archaeological Study from 2001 to 201

Wayne Huang, Jack Yu



Ripping Media Off Of the Wire

HONEY



Malware Migrating to Gaming Consoles: Embedded Devices, an AntiVirus-free Safe Hideout for Malware

Ahn Ki-Chan, Ha Dong-Joo



Training the Next Generation of Hardware Hackers -- Teaching Computer Organization and Assembly Language Hands-on with Embedded Systems

Andrew Kongs, Dr. Gerald Kane



ChaosVPN for playing CTFs

mc.fly, vyrus, ryd



FPGA Bitstream Reverse Engineering

Lang Nguyen



Kim Jong-il and Me: How to Build a Cyber Army to Defeat the U.S.

Charlie Miller



Big Brother on the Big Screen: Fact/Fiction?

Nicole Ozer, Kevin Bankston



Practical Cellphone Spying

Chris Paget



Extreme-range RFID Tracking

Chris Paget



My Life As A Spyware Developer

Garry Pejski



Implementing IPv6 at ARIN

Matt Ryanczak



Exploiting WebSphere Application Server's JSP Engine

Ed Schaller



Gaming in the Glass Safe - Games, DRM & Privacy

Ferdinand Schober



You're Stealing It Wrong! 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles

Jason Scott



Browser Based Defenses

James Shewmaker



Drivesploit: Circumventing Both Automated AND Manual Drive-by-Download Detection

Caleb Sima, Wayne Huang



Your ISP and the Government: Best Friends Forever.

Christopher Soghoian



Weaponizing Lady GaGa, Psychosonic Attacks

Brad Smith



From "No Way" to 0-day: Weaponizing the Unweaponizable

Joshua Wise



Pwned By The Owner: What Happens When You Steal A Hacker's Computer

Zoz



Panels



Hacking The Future: Weaponizing the Next Generation

James Arlen,Tim Krabec, Tiffany Rad, Leigh Honeywell, James Costello,



oCTF: 5 years in 50 minutes

DC-949 Panel: Adam, CP, Frank^2, Jeffball, Merlin,Vyrus,







DEF CON 18 Contest Madness!

Over the past week or two, we've had a flood of announcements for new contests! Check them out below!



Dark Tangent's Tamper Evident Contest

There are various tamper evident technologies out there, including tape, seals, locks, tags, and bags, to name a few. This contest will test your ability to perform "defeats" (Described below) against a range of inexpensive commercial low to medium security products.



Backdoor Hiding Contest

Two in one Backdoor Hiding/Finding Contest (participate in either or both): In the first stage, hiding participants provide a source code hiding a backdoor, in the second stage organizers mix the source codes with non-backdoored (placebos), and then ask finding participants to spot the placebos. Hiding participants get hiding points for being voted as a placebo and finding participants get points for spotting the placebos and negative points for false positives.



KoreLogic's "Crack Me If You Can" Contest

As a part of an authorized penetration test of a large corporate network, you have captured a large number of passwords hashes. The hashes are from Active Directory, UNIX systems, LDAP servers, routers, etc. As part of your analysis, your client has asked for password complexity statistics, what their users are doing right and/or wrong related to generating passwords, and identification of weak passwords. You only have 48 hours to complete this effort.





CTF Quals Official Results

Congratulations to the qualifying teams for DEF CON Capture the Flag 2010! Official Quals info is live on ddtek.biz, so check it out for standings, correct and submitted answers by team and much more!



Qualified teams:

1. VedaGodz (CONFIRMED!)

2. European Nopsled Team (CONFIRMED!)

3. TwoSixNine (CONFIRMED!)

X. Uberminers (deadline expired)

4. lollersk8erz (CONFIRMED!)

5. GoN (CONFIRMED!)

6. painsec (CONFIRMED!)

7. ACME Pharm (CONFIRMED!)

8. Routards (CONFIRMED!)

X. Nibbles (CAN'T PARTICIPATE)

9. shellphish (CONFIRMED!)

10. teambfe (CONFIRMED!)

alt. Plaid Parliament of Pwning (CONFIRMED!)

X. int3pid pandas (CAN'T PARTICIPATE)

alt. HackerDom (CONFIRMED!)



Photo by nateOne (source)

CFP Closes, More Talks Posted!

Here's another great batch of talks for DEF CON 18! Stay tuned, we got tons of last minute submissions, so there's a bunch more more coming down the pipe in the next couple of weeks!



Internet Wars Panel

More info to come.



Cyber[Crime|War] Charting Dangerous Waters

Iftach Ian Amit



Seccubus - Analyzing Vulnerability Assessment Data the Easy Way...

Frank Breedijk



Exploiting SCADA Systems

Jeremy Brown



Katana: Portable Multi-Boot Security Suite

JP Dunning



Making the DEF CON 18 Badge.

Joe "Kingpin" Grand



How to Hack Millions of Routers

Craig Heffner



Powershell...omfg

David Kennedy (ReL1K) and Josh Kelley (Winfang)



Like a Boss: Attacking JBoss

Tyler Krpata



Blitzableiter - the Release

Felix "FX" Lindner



Changing Threats To Privacy: From TIA To Google

Moxie Marlinspike



Attacking .NET Programs at Runtime

Jon McCoy



Securing MMOs: A Security Professional's View From the Inside

metr0



Wardriving the Smart Grid: Practical Approaches to Attacking Utility Packet Radios

Shawn Moyer and Nathan Keltner



The Games We Play

Brandon Nesbit



ExploitSpotting: Locating Vulnerabilities Out of Vendor Patches Automatically

Jeongwook Oh



Sniper Forensics - One Shot, One Kill

Christopher E. Pogue A.K.A "Big Poppa ReverShell"



Toolsmithing an IDA Bridge, Case Study For Building a Reverse Engineering Tool

Adam Pridgen



A New Approach to Forensic Methodology - !!BUSTED!! Case Studies

David C. Smith and Samuel Petreski



Web Application Fingerprinting with Static Files

Patrick Thomas



VirGraff101: An Introduction to Virtual Graffiti

Tottenkoph



An Examination of the Adequacy of the Laws Related to Cyber Warfare

Dondi "SpookDoctor06" West





Reg Open For SE Contest

The folks at social-engineer.org have taken the reigns of the DEF CON 18 Social Engineering Contest, and Registration is Open! This promises to be an exciting addition to this year's DEF CON, and has some pretty cool prizes, including an iPad and a spot on the Social Engineer Podcast for 1st place. Check out the contest description and official rules at http://www.social-engineer.org/blog/defcon-social-engineering-contest/.

CFP Closing Soon!

Only a few more days to submit your CFP to speak at DEF CON 18! Call for Papers will officially close Tuesday June 1, so get those submissions in to share your cutting edge hacking research with the world!



Check out the official announcement for details, and then fill out the Call for Papers Form.

News from the Summit

For immediate release:



MiniBosses (http://www.minibosses.com/) have signed on as an official act to perform at theSummit on Thursday July 28th during DEF CON . They are the second act to confirm a performance spot at this years Fundraiser. At ShmooCon in February, DualCore announced that they will return again for this years event for the 4th consecutive year and 3rd year as the headlining act.



Follow Us on Twitter for Event and Feature Guest Updates:

www.twitter.com/effsummit

Coming to event? Make your presences known on the Facebook Event Page:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112161832149640



About Mini Bosses:



Four mid-20's guys from Phoenix got togeather for one common cause...Recreate the NES hits you all know and love in real-time on stage for everyones enjoyment pleasure. They consider all Bossies to be their groupies from the costs of Toyko to the midlands of Michigan. If your into 8-bit power cords, get ready to ride the midi wave of Awesome!



About EFF:



Blending the expertise of lawyers, policy analysts, activists, and technologists, EFF achieves significant victories on behalf of consumers and the general public. EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations.



About Vegas 2.0:



A transient, a local or a weekend Vegas Warrior, however you peg us, we are THE Las Vegas InfoSec group. Our members are long time DEF CON and Computer Security Industry avant guards. When we are not planning theSummit, we spend are free cycles conjuring up Social Engineering, Web and Windows attacks. We are always looking for new locals to Las Vegas OR frequent visitors to stop by our labs conveniently located in North Las Vegas for a beer and some InfoSec foo!

Contest & CFP Action Required!

The vortex is swirling folks. There's sense of urgency in the air, you can't quite put your finger on it, but it's beginning to make you a little nervous and a little excited. Can you feel it nagging the back of your mind? That little voice saying, ever so quietly, "Less than 2 weeks left to submit a talk!", and "CTF Quals reg ends tomorrow!". Or maybe you hear, "write a short story", "Figure out LosT's puzzles" or "enter the Art Contest".



That voice is actually us reminding you that all of these things are coming up or going on within the next two days to three weeks. So if you want to participate, you better get moving! Keep up on current events, as always, on the DEF CON Twitter, DEF CON Facebook, DEF CON RSS Feed and here on defcon.org!

More DEF CON 18 Speakers!

Here's another fresh batch of delicious Speaker goodness for you! Enjoy!



Exploiting Internet Surveillance Systems

Decius



The Search for Perfect Handcuffs... and the Perfect Handcuff Key

Deviant Ollam



Jackpotting Automated Teller Machines Redux

Barnaby Jack



The Power of Chinese Security

Anthony Lai, Jake Appelbaum and Jon Oberheide



Repelling the Wily Insider

Matias Madou and Jacob West



You Spent All That Money And You Still Got Owned...

Joseph McCray



Cyberterrorism and the Security of the National Drinking Water Infrastructure

John McNabb



HD Voice - The Overdue Revolution

Doug Mohney



DEF CON Security Jam III: Now in 3-D?

David Mortman, Rich Mogull, Chris Hoff, Rsnake, Dave Maynor, and Larry Pesce



"This Needs To Be Fixed" and Other Jokes In Commit Statements

Bruce Potter and Logan Lodge



Airport Body Scanners and Possible Countermeasures

Paul F. Renda



Injecting Electromagnetic Pulses Into The Electric Grid

Paul F. Renda



SHODAN for Penetration Testers

Michael "theprez98" Schearer



SMART Project: Applying Reliability Metrics to Security Vulnerabilities

Blake Self, Wayne Zage and Dolores Zage



Hacking Oracle From Web Apps

Sumit "sid" Siddharth



So Many Ways to Slap A Yo-Ho:: Xploiting Yoville and Facebook for Fun and Profit

strace



Attack the Key, Own the Lock

Schuyler Towne and datagram



Balancing the Pwn Trade Deficit

Valsmith, Colin Ames and Anthony Lai



Keep your eyes on the DEF CON 18 Speakers Page and the DEF CON Twitter for new speaker announcements!

DEF CON 18 Speakers Posted!

Here we go! Here is the first of many batches of DEF CON 18 talks to be posted! Expect more early in the week!



FOCA2: The FOCA strikes back

Chema Alonso and José Palazón "Palako"



Connection String Parameter Attacks

Chema Alonso and José Palazón "Palako"



SCADA and ICS for Security Experts: How to avoid cyberdouchery

James Arlen



Web Services We Just Don't Need

Mike "mckt" Bailey



Our Instrumented Lives: Sensors, Sensors, Everywhere...

Greg Conti



Cloud Computing, a weapon of mass destruction?

David "VideoMan" M. N. Bryan



The keys to running a successful DEF CON Group by DC612

David "VideoMan" M. N. Bryan and Jared Bird



Programmable HID USB Keystroke Dongle: Using the Teensy as a pen testing device

Adrian Crenshaw



Constricting the Web: Offensive Python for Web Hackers

Nathan Hamiel and Marcin Wielgoszewski



Hardware Black Magic: Designing Printed Circuit Boards

Dr. Fouad Kiamilev, Corey 'c0re' Lange and Stephen 'afterburn' Janansky



DCFluX in: Moon-bouncer

Matt "DCFluX" Krick



Air Traffic Control Insecurity 2.0

Righter Kunkel



"This is not the droid you're looking for..."

Nicholas J. Percoco and Christian Papathanasiou



Malware Freak Show 2: The Client-Side Boogaloo

Nicholas J. Percoco and Jibran Ilyas



Build a Lie Detector/Beat a Lie Detector

Rain and j03b34r



Keep your eyes on the DEF CON 18 Speakers Page and the DEF CON Twitter for new speaker announcements!

New DEF CON 18 Site!

Check out the new site for DEF CON 18! It's got the most basic info for now, so keep your eyes peeled as all of the great talks, contests and events solidify!



You can expect the first round of accepted speakers to be posted very soon! We're also working on a page to guide those new to DEF CON where to look for pertinent information. You will be able find all of the scheduling and entertainment info here as well as it becomes available, so be sure to follow us on the Twitter or Facebook feeds to stay up to the minute as we post new data!



Wander around, get familiar, and be sure to check back for frequent updates to the madness that is DEF CON 18!

New DEF CON 18 Short Story Contest!

This contest is new this year and we are hoping it goes over well. Lots of you out there are avid writers and some just have an incredible imagination that when put to paper it blows your mind. Speaking from several years of reviewing white papers and slide decks, you guys are hilarious. We'd like to see your flair for creative writing put to another use and reward you for a (*cough*troll*Cough*) job well done. Good Luck! Check out all the details on the Short Story Contest Forum!

DEF CON 18 Updates

Do your hear it? The whir of the gears of DEF CON planning reaching operating speed? All around us events are springing into action!



HighWiz has stated intention to bring back DC101, a primer for those new to attending DEF CON. Not many details yet, but you can stay tuned to DC101 on the DEF CON Forums to stay up to date with details as they become available!



We've also noticed that The Summit will be back this year, hosted by Vegas 2.0 to benefit the EFF! You can find details on the Summit Facebook page!



We also can't fail to mention recent activity on LosT's Mystery Challenge. He says it's going to be the last year, so you better pay attention if you want to participate! You can follow the Mystery Challenge Forum and the Official Mystery Challenge Site at ten-five-seven.org.



There is also a new forums based contest, called "What's in Neil's Pants", wherein Nikita asks a trivia question every week for the chance to win fabulous prizes from the things Neil leaves in his many pockets when he throws his pants in the hamper.



You can also look for the DEF CON 18 Website to launch by the end of the month with an announcement for the DEF CON 18 Artwork Contest to be released in early May!



As always, keep your eyes trained on the DEF CON Twitter for Updates as they occur!

EFF Proudly Presents the First Annual Defcon Getaway Fundraising Contest!

From EFF.org:



As the winter snows begin to melt, revealing a landscape full of promise and hope, a hacker’s thoughts turn to flights of fancy: specifically, the thought of being in Las Vegas during the last weekend in July.



If you’re one of those hackers and you love digital freedom, EFF would like your help spreading the word about our efforts to protect and defend coders’ rights by encouraging your friends and neighbors to join you in supporting us. In return, EFF wants to help the best EFFvangelists enjoy Defcon 18 in style! Read more...

DEF CON 18 Event/Contest Update!

Contest and event planning is starting to heat up! A few more have surfaced (marked in white) and some others have begun conversation! Check out your favorite DEF CON Contest or Event link below for more info!



10,000¢ Hacker Pyramid: Call for Help

Artwork Contest: Coming in May

Badge Hacking Contest: Forum Active

Be The Match Foundation - Bone Marrow Drive: NEW! Forum Active

Beverage Cooling Contraption Contest: Forum Active

Cannonball Run: Forum Active

Capture the Flag: Quals Announced

DEF CON Shoot: Forum Active

Geo Challenge: Forum Active

Social Engineering Contest: No Posts

Goon Band — Recognize: Forum Active

Forum Meet: Forum Active

Hacker Jeopardy: Forum Active

Hacker Karaoke: Forum Active

Hardware Hacking Village: Forum Active

Lockpicking Contests: Forum Active

Mystery Challenge: Forum Active

Official DEF CON DJs, Music, and Events: Call for DJS, Forum Active

Open CTF: New Organizers, Forum Active

QueerCon: No Posts

Scavenger Hunt: Forum Active

Spot the Fed:Forum Active



Keep your eyes on the DEF CON Twitter, DEF CON Facebook, DEF CON RSS Feed and defcon.org for updates!

DEF CON 18 CTF Quals Announced!

Defense Diutinus Technologies Corp (ddtek) is pleased to announce the round of qualification for DEF CON 18 CTF.



Stock up on Red Bull, put the pizza delivery on speed dial, polish up your fancy shellcodes, and replenish the duct tape supply. The competition for these coveted spots will be held over 55 non-stop hours 21-24 May. When the dust clears only the 10 best will be invited to join us this summer in sin city for the annual DEF CON deathmatch. Read More...

Open CTF: DC949 Passes the Torch

DC949, the creators of the Open CTF Contest (formerly Amateur CTF), after five long years have decided to step down as organizers. DEF CON would like to thank them for all of their hard work over the last five years in making a contest that was not only fun, but also open to all who'd like to test the waters of Capture the Flag type competition.



They have passed the torch to a team that has competed in their contest many times, TubeWarriors. Welcome TubeWarriors, we wish you luck!



You can read more in the Open CTF thread on the DEF CON Forums, as well as DC949's Farewell Thread.

DEFCON 18 Badge Call-for-Integration

With the electronic DEFCON badge now in its fifth incarnation, we've decided to try something different. We're opening our kimono (just slightly) for DEFCON attendees, groups, villages, or contest organizers who want to integrate some piece of information or hide some piece of data in the badge to help further their cause during the con. For example, maybe your contest wants to hide a clue on the badge and then contestants have to find it in the code or press a certain button to reveal it... Read more on the DEF CON Forums. Submissions are due by April 1, 2010.

Be The Match Foundation - Bone Marrow Drive @ DEF CON 18

As some of you may know, One of our speakers Thomas Wilhelm was recently a bone marrow donor from the Be the Match program. He contacted us about setting up a registry drive at Defcon 18. We like that Idea and are going to do what we can to make sure they have the space they need in order to grow their donor registry. You can Read More on the DEF CON Forums, and keep your eye on that forum for further details as they develop.

Want To Be A DJ or Band At DEF CON 18?

The Artist Bookings for DEF CON 18 Bands and DJs are currently open! If you are a DJ or a Band that would like to play at the Black and White Balls, by the Pool, in the Chill Out area, or various other DEF CON events, now is the time to submit your application! DJ Great Scott will be accepting submissions up until May 3rd, 11:59pm (23:59) CST (US CENTRAL). You can find his post announcing this on the DEF CON Forums and fill out the application form. Good Luck!