[00:00.000 --> 00:04.720]  Hey everyone, I'm Shannon Morse with DEF CON 30. I'm over here at one of my favorite villages,
[00:04.720 --> 00:10.580]  the radio frequency village, chatting with Zero Chaos and Rick. We're going to call him Rick M
[00:10.580 --> 00:16.440]  for today's interview. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, how are you? I'm doing all right,
[00:16.440 --> 00:20.980]  you know, I'm a little loopy at this time of day, but I'm feeling pretty good, so I'm pretty happy.
[00:20.980 --> 00:26.840]  We've been setting since six o'clock Tuesday? Yeah, yeah, you know, nobody gets any sleep here.
[00:26.840 --> 00:29.840]  Fixing the radio frequency stuff. Yeah, that's always an issue.
[00:30.440 --> 00:36.280]  Especially inside these Faraday cages, I'm sure. Absolutely. So tell me, this is your second time
[00:36.280 --> 00:43.100]  back since the big pandemic, so... This is our first physical back since the pandemic started.
[00:43.100 --> 00:47.600]  Okay, perfect. Three years off-site. So I'm sure that you've gone through some big differences as
[00:47.600 --> 00:52.880]  far as trying to figure out how to still make it like the radio frequency village while you're
[00:52.880 --> 00:57.780]  doing online conventions. How has that been? And we've kept doing conventions. We've done
[00:57.780 --> 01:03.360]  six or seven a year since the pandemic started. Yeah. All virtual, but I'll hand it over,
[01:03.360 --> 01:08.180]  I'll hold over to Ray. Yeah, so we got the same notice everybody else did, right, about DEF CON
[01:08.180 --> 01:13.400]  going virtual a couple years ago. And we spent an enormous amount of effort to build a virtual
[01:13.400 --> 01:18.320]  capture the flag that we got off the ground and successful for that. And we've been maintaining
[01:18.320 --> 01:23.500]  and actually publicly released all the source code to over the past two years. And then we
[01:23.500 --> 01:28.940]  came back in person and we realized, huh, none of our gears in date anymore. Most of it doesn't
[01:28.940 --> 01:34.140]  work anymore. And we had to kind of rebuild everything from scratch at the last possible
[01:34.140 --> 01:39.260]  second and at great expense, but it turned out pretty well. And it's significantly smaller now,
[01:39.260 --> 01:45.540]  easier to break down, more efficient, but our range of frequencies is now from kilohertz to
[01:45.540 --> 01:50.980]  high level gigahertz. Really? We're pushing 60 gigahertz on some of our challenges at this point.
[01:50.980 --> 01:55.860]  So what kind of challenges are you doing this year? So this year we've got all the stuff that
[01:55.860 --> 01:59.720]  we've been doing, you know, your standard web cracking and WPA cracking and a couple of software
[01:59.720 --> 02:04.560]  to find radio challenges that are really common. FM broadcast, just a bunch of stuff to get people
[02:04.560 --> 02:08.120]  started learning how to use their new toys that they got in the vendor village and those kinds
[02:08.120 --> 02:11.900]  of things. But then this year we added a whole bunch of new stuff for in person. So we've got a
[02:11.900 --> 02:18.840]  bunch of TPMS, we've got car key fobs, we've got six gigahertz Wi-Fi and 60 gigahertz Wi-Fi.
[02:18.840 --> 02:23.460]  There's just a very large amount more we can do when we don't have to virtualize it. So the
[02:23.820 --> 02:27.380]  virtualized stuff is kind of awesome because we more or less run the same code on a bunch of
[02:27.380 --> 02:31.220]  physical stuff and it's really small and convenient. And then we just buy a bunch of
[02:31.220 --> 02:35.300]  stuff and bring it and set it up. And that way people have things to look at. There's blinky
[02:35.300 --> 02:39.860]  lights that everybody likes. And it's a lot more obvious, you know, hey, are they running 60
[02:39.860 --> 02:43.900]  gigahertz? You take a walk past the table. That sure looks like a 60 gigahertz access point to
[02:43.900 --> 02:47.540]  me. I guess we should check that out. So it makes it a little more fun because you get to see and
[02:47.540 --> 02:52.420]  touch more versus the more common stuff that's not as exciting. We've kind of built into little
[02:52.420 --> 02:59.340]  kids. So this sounds like an excuse to buy really cool, sparkly and shiny things and bring them to
[02:59.340 --> 03:04.200]  people and do show and tell. Absolutely. The other big part of this, and it's to get some of the
[03:04.200 --> 03:09.060]  people out of the room more than in the room, is we've increased our foxes dramatically. So we have
[03:09.060 --> 03:16.300]  Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TPMS, key fob. There's a key fob fox that you actually have to crack a code
[03:16.300 --> 03:21.600]  and then track the fox based on your correct code. Oh, I want to play. Yeah.
[03:22.780 --> 03:28.280]  Laura, we have a message in Laura going out called coffee. So if you walk up to somebody
[03:28.280 --> 03:34.540]  and find coffee, you're finding it over Laura 923.4, I think it is. That's so cool. We're doing
[03:34.540 --> 03:40.920]  the largest indoor war walking ever. Wow. So that is going to be super exciting. We're really curious
[03:40.920 --> 03:46.060]  to see. Working with Wiggle's just been amazing. They've helped us to build out a scoring engine.
[03:46.060 --> 03:53.180]  To track 27 properties throughout Vegas, floor to floor to floor to floor to find 10 hidden foxes.
[03:53.320 --> 03:59.160]  Wow. And what kind of like prizes are you giving out for CTFs and for the fox hunt? All that good
[03:59.160 --> 04:03.680]  stuff. So we actually have picked up quite a few sponsors in the last couple of years, which has
[04:03.680 --> 04:08.100]  been great because our expenses were not non-zero when we went to the cloud. There was obviously
[04:08.100 --> 04:13.280]  some good money put into that. So we picked up a bunch of sponsors. So the prizes are wide and
[04:13.280 --> 04:18.420]  varied this year and we're quite excited. We're hoping to give out a whole bunch of really cool
[04:18.420 --> 04:24.580]  equipment used to play these challenges. We try usually to give out the equipment to the people
[04:24.580 --> 04:29.500]  who didn't get that challenge. So the less a challenge was won, we kind of seek out that
[04:29.500 --> 04:33.740]  equipment and give it to people to help get that going more. That's awesome. I really like that.
[04:33.740 --> 04:38.380]  Our goal is to teach. That's truly what it boils down to. From you guys early days, we've kind of
[04:38.380 --> 04:42.740]  taken that and run with it as well. We want people to be better at this. We want people to get very
[04:42.740 --> 04:47.600]  good at doing what they're trying to do. Because they're spending three straight days in here,
[04:47.600 --> 04:50.460]  they got to get a little bit better with things. So we're constantly giving them
[04:50.460 --> 04:56.460]  more difficult challenges, more difficult, you know, tests across the board. And Zero Chaos,
[04:56.460 --> 05:02.020]  can you tell me a little bit about the demos that are going on in here? I know Kentaro
[05:02.020 --> 05:07.320]  was giving a talk. Yeah, so we've got a full schedule of talks. We've got a whole bunch of
[05:07.320 --> 05:13.000]  people talking about antenna theory, and, you know, different LoRa mesh networks, and there's
[05:13.000 --> 05:18.580]  all kinds of really cool stuff. What's really wonderful is because we have such a nice space,
[05:18.580 --> 05:22.060]  and we've got so many people coming back this year, we're actually doing a couple of meetups
[05:22.060 --> 05:26.840]  for like people who make war driving rigs, just to get together, talk about what they built,
[05:26.840 --> 05:31.940]  why they built, what worked, what didn't. And we kind of started up to it's a five minutes on stage
[05:31.940 --> 05:35.200]  to talk about whatever you built, and then the next person gets to go and talk about what they
[05:35.200 --> 05:38.420]  built. Yeah. And then when we run out of people to go through, we just kind of sit around and chat
[05:38.420 --> 05:43.720]  for a while. So it's, it's a great excuse, because you can't do those things when it's remote. Yeah,
[05:43.720 --> 05:47.860]  we can film a talk, you can look at the camera, and you can do your thing. And it's not the same,
[05:47.860 --> 05:51.180]  you know, you get together and you get these social moments. And that's what we really,
[05:51.180 --> 05:55.260]  we really tried to foster that this year. Yeah, we survived off of Discord, but we don't want to
[05:55.260 --> 06:00.580]  stay on Discord exclusively. And that's been where we've been. I feel like RF has become one of the
[06:00.580 --> 06:07.760]  cons inside a con that Jeff Moss is advocating about DEF CON. It's a platform for all these
[06:07.760 --> 06:12.280]  different communities to come together. Absolutely. We're happy to be a part of that. We've been we
[06:12.280 --> 06:17.680]  were one of the original three villages. So we're still here 15 years later. It's been 15 years.
[06:17.680 --> 06:25.860]  This is 15. Wow. Geez, dude. I think you're supposed to turn the shirt to the camera.
[06:26.260 --> 06:33.060]  No, no, you didn't quite. There you go. There we go. 15 years for the wireless village.
[06:33.140 --> 06:37.200]  That is a very old shirt, sir. It is. It's older than most of our contestants. That's
[06:37.200 --> 06:41.060]  why he has to keep his arms down. That's right. I don't think there's holes yet.
[06:41.860 --> 06:45.440]  That's why he has to keep his arms down. There you go. I will keep my arms down.
[06:46.140 --> 06:50.140]  Well, tell me where can people go if they want to learn more about RF if they want to get involved
[06:50.140 --> 06:54.660]  with the CTF and the challenges? What's the deal? The number one place to go is definitely
[06:54.660 --> 06:59.300]  rfhackers.com. You go to the website. You've got links to our discord. You've got links to our
[06:59.300 --> 07:04.420]  wiki that explain how to play the game. We're running the game both in person and virtual for
[07:04.420 --> 07:08.220]  Defcon. We're running fully hybrid. So everything that's been available for the last two years is
[07:08.220 --> 07:12.560]  available to anybody worldwide. And then we do run this a couple of times a year for other
[07:12.560 --> 07:16.640]  conferences and a couple of times a year because we're bored, right? People have nothing to do
[07:16.640 --> 07:21.060]  around the holidays and they want something to do. We just spin up the game because why not?
[07:21.060 --> 07:25.620]  So we give people that chance to play and learn and be a community and have fun.
[07:25.620 --> 07:30.420]  Is there anything else that y'all would like to add for the community on the internets?
[07:30.500 --> 07:37.960]  I mean, in the last two weeks, we've enumerated 22.4 million new access points with Wiggle.
[07:38.260 --> 07:44.880]  Prior to that, we were in second place because the Hard Hat Brigade took on our job and went
[07:44.880 --> 07:51.900]  forward. So now we own place three, four, and one. They're coming out at us. So we're constantly
[07:51.900 --> 07:56.720]  trying to get this war driving, trying to get people back to the early days of where all this
[07:56.720 --> 08:00.420]  started. I mean, if you can't do that, you can't do the next pieces because you can't find the
[08:00.420 --> 08:05.520]  access point. Yeah, totally. Well, thank you so much for letting me chat with y'all. I really
[08:05.520 --> 08:11.280]  appreciate it. Rick, ZeroChaos, it's always a pleasure to chat with both of you. And go get
[08:11.280 --> 08:14.700]  into your shenanigans. Shenanigans away. Oh, we will.