You're witnessing a miracle unicorn event right now because I'm not supposed to be here, but here I am.
Hey.
And since I'm not supposed to be here, I have no fucking idea what's going on.
We have slides.
Okay, so let me just tell you a little bit of the history of DC 101.
It's gone up, it's gone down, it's changed.
But really the idea is when we created DEF CON or when I created DEF CON, everybody just kind of learned from each other.
And we've gotten so large and we've gotten so many sort of myths and stories that we want to assemble a team here to sort of explain what's real, what's not, how to get the most out of the con, what we're trying to do with the con, what we're not trying to do.
And you'll hear this first.
You'll hear this phrase over and over at the con, and it's kind of cliche, but it's sort of like the con is what you make of it.
And what we're trying to say with that is look around.
Like how many thousands of people are here?
You'll get lost in a sea of people unless you find a way to make the con your own experience.
And we try really hard to do that.
So, for example, you'll notice you'll be like in a room of thousands of people.
And you're like, how am I going to?
Okay.
What am I going to do?
Oh, I like physical security.
Oh, I could do tamper evident contest.
I could do lock picking.
Okay, lock picking.
Oh, I think I want to try low security locks.
And next thing you know, you're at a table with ten people picking locks.
Right?
So you went from like tens of thousands of people to ten.
And we try really hard to give you all these sort of like off ramp experiences where you can go find other people that are interested in what you're interested in.
And then you're done lock picking.
Boom.
You're back in the crazy stream vortex and you land somewhere else on hacking airplanes.
Right?
And so if you expect the con to come to you, it might not work out so well for you.
But if you just show a little interest and get into a couple of these off ramps, you'll meet amazing people.
By show of hands, who was in line con?
Yeah.
Okay.
Were you scared?
Did it turn out okay, though?
People were probably pretty cool to you in line con.
That's like the earliest moment of socialization.
Right?
It's okay to ask questions and it's okay to make new friends.
So that's kind of what's going on with line con.
Now, it wasn't planned that way.
It just happened because you had to sit in the line con for so long.
But in the end, it's part of what it means to sort of attend def con.
So with this panel, we mix it up every year.
But we want to show you.
How different people have experienced the con and their advice.
There is no one magic perspective, right?
It's so large.
Around def con 3, I think at first I was really angry with myself because people were coming up to me at my own conference and telling me about things I did not see.
And I felt like I'm missing out.
Like what is the point?
All these people are having these great experiences and I'm hearing about it secondhand.
Like that's.
And then at def con 4, I'm like, oh, no, that's a good thing.
Right?
More of that.
And so now, sometimes I'll just secretly scroll on Twitter and I'll be like, awesome.
That was cool.
I have no idea what just happened.
You know?
And I think you have to sort of take that approach.
Okay.
So I'm going to hand it off to Nikita who def con would probably not happen without her organizational capabilities.
So with that, Nikita.
Thanks, boss.
Yeah.
So I just wanted to introduce some of the people that are on the panel.
Actually, we talked about maybe them introducing themselves.
So we're going to start with.
Hi.
I'm Mar.
Okay.
Hi.
I'll be really close to the mic.
All right.
I'm Mar.
I am the badge designer this year and I do art around con.
And you can see it in the hallways and on the signage and stuff.
Yep.
Hey.
I'm Kirsten Renner.
Everyone calls me Krenner.
I had a cooler handle back in the day but it didn't stick.
I'm mostly known for helping start the car hacking village.
This is our ninth year.
Good evening.
My name is Dilo and I'm the chief of staff for the SOC.
Hi.
I'm Five Penny and I'm the vendor lead.
Hi.
I'm Megan Wu and I am the DEF CON workshops lead and also in charge of DEF CON workshop CFP.
Thank you, guys.
You said you were the merch lead and I heard it and I'm a liability.
Okay.
Mar, would you like to come up and talk a little bit about the badges and the art?
Okay.
Just keep moving down.
All right.
Hi.
Okay.
So, like I said, I'm Mar.
I did the badges this year.
So, I just want to talk to you a little bit about how you can interact with them and what they're all about.
All right.
Okay.
So...
Okay.
So, the...
The badges, if you've noticed the shape of them, there's a difference between the inhuman and the human badges.
The human badges are a little bit wider, and the inhumans are a little bit skinnier.
The reason for this is they're Penrose tiles.
Penrose tiles are pretty geeky if you go on Wikipedia and fall down a rabbit hole about them,
or if you come to my badge talk tomorrow.
They're an example of aperiodic tiling.
In physical space, you can actually put them together into a big mosaic.
I wanted people to interact that way with each other, with the badges.
That's in physical space.
If you look on the back of your badge, there's a URL there.
It's spux.art.
If you take a look at the back of your badge, there's a URL there.
If you take the little insert that's inside your badge pack and type in the UUID into the website there,
there's a huge mosaic that's growing right now.
People are doing it.
Every time we add a new person, it just expands.
We're all making this huge collective piece of art together.
Hopefully, by the end of the con, it's massive and beautiful.
We'll see what happens.
Once you place your tile, you can place it.
Again, as many times as you want.
You can get your buddies together and create actual art instead of just sticking it somewhere.
We'll see what happens.
What's next?
The lanyard puzzle.
I don't have a lot to tell you yet about the lanyard puzzle.
If you look, there's some characters.
On your lanyards, there's different characters on the different lanyards, so try to put it together.
See what you come up with.
And...
Yeah, so overall, what I'm trying to do with the badge here is just endless customization.
So you have this chamber.
On this type of badge, even on the other type of badge, if you didn't get one of these thick plastic badges, there's a little sleeve.
And the inserts will also fit into that little sleeve.
So I pre-released the specs for this little thing I'm calling a shard or an insert...
Call it whatever you like.
An add-on.
Woops, let me drop it on the floor real quick.
It's gone forever, no I found it, it's right here.
So if you look on the back of a program, there's a little pop out insert, so you don't have
to create a PCB and be all glowy at con, the ones that I've seen are really amazing
and you guys are super creative.
But you can draw your own, you can cut it from acrylic, really anything you want to
show off who you are at con.
Okay, and then on that note, the last thing I want to talk about is galleries and self-expression.
So there's so much art that we see in the hallways and so much creativity and hackers
and artists are just so similarly brained in a lot of really interesting ways.
And I think that we should be seeing more of that and give it more of a dedicated
space.
So we've been talking about having like a more dedicated gallery space for the kind
of art that you're making in coming years.
So keep an eye out for that and that's all I got for you.
I'm sorry I can't stay for the panel, but thank you so much and I hope you have a blast.
Okay, hey, I'm Kay Renner, I'm going to tell you a funny story and I'm going to roll
into how that story, you can take it however you want on how you may customize your experience
and kind of enrich and enhance your engagements, everyone that you're meeting, whether it's
at a talk or in a line or at a village, some of the best engagements are going to be just
in the hallway, how you might not do what I did unless you want to have an interesting
story 15 years later.
And then I'm going to give you a little peek behind the curtain.
Okay.
So I'm going to go into village ops and then you can kind of imagine when I, so I'll name
a couple of things that kind of are involved in setting up a village and I'll forget a
whole bunch of things.
So multiply it in your head and then imagine that there's 40 some odd villages.
So I'm telling you about one and then multiply that times 50 and then whatever the appropriate
multiplier is as you compare all the things I've got going in my head compared to what,
I don't know.
Nikita has going in her head when people don't even let her walk down the hallway.
So there we go.
So here goes my story.
The person who it's about promised to pretend they remember.
I hope they do actually.
So I'm getting on the plane.
Somebody handed me some books and they were like, you should read this.
And one of them was Art of Intrusion.
And I was like, what am I doing?
What does hacker mean?
What is DEF CON?
And I'm doing my research.
And I actually read Hackers for Dummies.
And I'm looking on websites and now don't boo me.
At the time I was a recruiter.
I was given a list of people to recruit.
And the first rule is, well, first of all, raise your hand if you've never been here.
It's frigging awesome.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Okay.
So someone said.
Okay.
Okay.
So now what you're going to do is you're going to connect to some people that have done
this before.
And those people have kind of helped guide you through and everything.
So I, so that's my first tip for you.
If you're following Ray Redacted's Redacted Hunt, flag five is to remember two things
I said.
All right.
So connect to someone who's been here before to kind of guide you through stuff.
they'll let us know if it's an actual emergency in the meantime I'll talk
faster let's go all right so fast forward I met some people who were
amazing I can't I was I was very fortunate they kept bringing me to cool
places and I was just kind of soaking it all in and I end up a Defcon was at Rio
at the time this was Defcon I want to say 18 I highly recommend by the way
going on YouTube and watching Kristen Padgett's extreme RFID extreme distance
RFID demo so that demo was happening on the 30th floor of the Rio you actually
remember okay all right and then I just ended up in the room right
so there's no way I knew there was a room on the 30th floor on the 30th floor
So I'm looking around, and it's exciting.
There's camera crews, and everything's fun.
And I see two people that look familiar, and I'm like,
maybe these were people I was supposed to recruit or something.
I don't know, but they look familiar.
So I just walk right up to them and go,
hi, I'm Kirsten. You look familiar.
And it was you, and you were talking to Dan.
And you were very polite about it.
You were just kind of like, I don't know, you probably don't remember.
He goes like this.
Perfect example.
And then they just went back to their conversation.
So I'm glad I added to your content there.
So just real quick, so that's funny, that's cute.
Gave you something to talk about.
But I could name a whole bunch of people.
I don't even have to name their handle.
I could just say their first name.
And you know, you all know exactly who they are.
And I'm not going to go down a whole list of people
because I didn't get permission from them all.
I'm not speaking on their behalf. This is my opinion.
But.
I did get permission from a couple.
So if you see Jason, you expect a hug.
And he's kind of obliged to give you one, right?
That's a thing.
And if you see Katie's beautiful pink hair,
you want to pick her brain.
I can tell you, with 15 years of experience,
everyone wants to do that.
And she's very generous of her time.
This is a community united by a passion
and a love for teaching and learning.
So everyone that did the research to build the content,
to give the talks, they're constantly trying
to build content for you.
And they're very generous of their times.
And the bulk of this is on the backs of volunteers, right?
So you're going to notice things that are broken
or wrong in your experience.
I kind of recommend letting us know.
We need to know if it's broken or bad.
And then you could offer to help.
And then you could start becoming a contributor.
You can start becoming a part of the community
by offering your ideas and your suggestions
and things like that.
I keep thinking it's like I said a code word
and it's like, you got a point.
I'm fucking winning over here.
You're a winner, winner.
I am winning.
All right, so that's about it.
I don't know if this is in the big DJ slide.
We're investigating.
Still investigating.
Still investigating.
Supplier.
All righty.
Okay.
And the last thing I'm going to say is everyone you're talking to,
make sure you take a moment to look around you and meet people.
Could be the next person that you're going to hire.
Could be your next best friend.
One day, I accidentally met the CEO of my next company.
Pretty cool, huh?
So you're surrounded by greatness and enjoy your show.
Thank you.
And it should be the last person who comes up.
And thank you to the people who are helping me out.
And thank you to the staff that are supporting me.
And thank you to the staff that are supporting me.
Thank you to everyone that's been supporting me throughout the year.
Thanks everyone.
I'm going to jump over to the next person.
And then we have the first person that we're going to introduce
that will be our next speaker.
Thank you.
that you get value at instead of being, you know, talked down to. So the 3-2-1 rule. These are
guidelines that we ask you to follow. Three hours of sleep a day, two meals, and a shower. Friends,
this is Vegas and it's hot. Please shower and use deodorant and we love you. Also, because we're in
and out of air-conditioned rooms, we're in and out of the heat. Concrete is real. We all go home with
the chesty cough and it's just gross. How can we, like, work against that? Follow the 3-2-1 rule and
definitely take those showers. Wash your hands. Use sanitizer, hand sanitizer frequently. And then
also, maybe limit handshakes. Maybe do an elbow pump or a fist pump or something. Or even, you
know, I work with kids, so we do toe taps. You know, keep it fun and maybe not transmit so many
germs. I also talk really fast, so sorry.
We also have this safety third rule. So know your boundaries. Know what works for you. We are in the
desert. But the SOC is really the Department of Fun Enforcement. So we want to make sure that you have
fun. And in order to do that, we need to ask you to do a couple things. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.
And also, drink some electrolytes. If you're going to drink some alcohol, it is DEFCON. People did
shots. Follow that rule.
With some water, alternate back and forth. Make good choices. And then also, try not to put yourself in
danger. If you find yourself in a situation, it happens, look for a red shirt. All goons wear red
shirts. But not all red shirts are SOC goons. So if you find yourself in a situation, ask a red shirt to
put you in contact with a SOC goon.
We will gladly meet with you, talk with you, find out what you're upset about or what kind of help you
need. And in addition to that, as a part of our SOC team, we have the hotline. So if you, DEFCON believes that
your mental and physical health are important. Sorry I'm just reading a note. Here's some reasons to call
the hotline. Are you struggling with a mental health issue? Are you feeling scared or worried about your
physical safety?
Do you want to voice the concern?
concern. Would you like to report a code of conduct violation
anonymously if you preferred? We have a phone number. It's up
there. All the places. We also have a Discord channel called
DEF CON hotline and there's an e-mail that you can e-mail your
concerns to at safety at DEF CON dot org. Those are all the ways
you can find the hotline. So also in terms of safety, these
hallways, we've got stanchions and we've got flagging tape and
people are walking in different directions. Just take a minute,
put your phone in your pocket, look up, look where you're going
and try and stay to the right. That'll help traffic move easily
and let's talk about some respect, friends, because you
know what? We are a community and we all just really are here
to learn and get to know each other and get to know more about
the community. So let's be mindful that when you're taking
pictures, please, if you're going to do it, I mean, we know
you do it. There's a photo policy. We ask you to follow it.
There's a whole code of conduct thing. So, you know, maybe read
it and try and follow it. But if you're going to hold your phone
and you're going to take a picture, be obnoxious about it
and be like, hey, I'm about to take a picture. If you don't
want to be in it, turn your face away. If you see someone's
pointing their camera at you, turn your face away. If you
notice that someone took a picture of you and you're very
uncomfortable with that, turn your face away. If you notice that
person, you know what? Please say something. Hey, excuse me,
you know what? I really wasn't prepared to be in that. Do you
mind deleting it? Friends, if someone comes up to you and says,
hey, could you delete that? Be nice. Be respectful and say, you
know what? Sure, not a problem. So that we're respecting each
other. That would be really great. Let's see. What else?
Don't be afraid to get to know the people around you as you're
introducing yourselves, your standards, whatever it may be.
in lines and you get to meet new friends be approachable hey you know it was so
great to meet you can I give you a hug consent is key my friends say it again
for the people in the back consent is key so if you're gonna hug if you're
gonna touch someone in some way please please please ask for consent because if
you don't then they call us and then we get to find and talk to you um that was
it for me so I'm glad you guys are here thank you so much for asking me to be a
part of this panel this is like I said this is my 13th year but this is my
first time speaking but I have to go back to work after so I did not take a
shot so everyone could you know raise the drink and take one for me that would
be great
hi I'm five penny um I am not much of a public speaker so I'm gonna do my best
here okay so this year we have uh vendors as well as exhibitors exhibitors are a new
department for us um they don't sell anything it's more kind of like a classic trade show
and
they
we sponsor the non-profits that you will see throughout the vendor room this year
the vendor room also has
uh the vendor room has a non-profit corner that you guys should definitely check out and visit
excuse me
you
you
didn't know I was going to be doing this
um so
uh we also have communities in the non-profit area of the vendor room this year some you will
recognize such as WISP
and in the vendor area you'll see a lot of stuff out on the table the vendors are very friendly
they want to talk to everybody about their products but that doesn't mean what you're
seeing is free so definitely when you're talking to the vendors engage with them
make sure that the swag is available to take and it's not actually a product
and I think that's it
I don't want to be here
hey everyone
so
so
, as you all know we have a lot of content across all of the properties here at Caesars, Harrah's, Link, and Flamingo
obviously as the workshops lead I usually don't leave Flamingo a lot since that's where our workshops are at
but what I would recommend as we get into the main days of the con on Friday and Saturday
and then before closing on Sunday is take some time and review the program
the schedules the list of things the talks vendors contests and events all of that and try to pick a couple of things that would interest you
download the hacker tracker app so that way you can stay on top of things and also hop on to DEF CON social or the forums and try to find out what other folks are interested in what they're doing here at con
when I started coming to DEF CON Twitter was pretty brand new so that was how we would
like find out where everybody was congregating which bar everyone was
hanging out at what talks folks were most interested to see what villages were
doing the coolest stuff and then we would meet there so DEF CON social is
kind of taking that place now and if all else fails have a backup plan so we
have DC TV playing across a lot of the hotel properties and
we have five channels and it's it really beats standing in line especially like
Saturday morning when you might be a little hungover or the end of Saturday
afternoon or Friday afternoon if you're feeling really overwhelmed especially as
a lot of like introverts and ambiverts we're surrounded by people they're
constant stimulation we just need a moment but we don't want that FOMO we
have DC TV and we also have twitch
so at main stage we have four main tracks with about 120 talks there's
something for everybody but not all talks are for everybody so as well as
being the head of the workshop CFP I'm a member of the main stage CFP review
board and what we try to do is take all of the proposals review them and try to
figure out what's interesting what's novel what do we think that you as the
attendees might have a chance to do and what we're trying to do is take all of the proposals review them and try to figure out what's interesting what's novel what do we think that you as the attendees might have
most interested so we ask that you guys keep that in mind and don't heckle
the speakers especially since a lot of us like I said are introverts and
ambiverts and it's hard enough to just get up on this stage so if you have a
question or a comment save it for after the talk approach then be like hey let
me buy you like a coffee or beverage of your choice and let's like I have some
questions or you I want to talk about your talk most people are really
receptive to that and it's such a great way to pull all the calls about what you would like or something so as这里
less hostile than being heckled
during like your first DEF CON talk.
Then we also have workshops.
So this year we are located
at the bottom floor of the Flamingo.
We have five sessions a day on Thursday, today,
Friday and Saturday.
They usually run from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m.
And we cover everything from red team, blue team,
mobile app sec.
We have our first policy workshop this year.
And so we're really excited about that.
Most of them sell out within minutes.
This year we had a couple that sold out within hours.
So it's really hard to get a seat into them.
But on the forums, we do have a thread that people,
if they're canceling their pre-reg,
they let folks know like,
hey, I have a ticket for, or not for sale, but for swap.
And I can transfer it over to you
if you wanna go to this workshop.
Otherwise we don't have a wait list.
So please don't fill up the hallway.
We would really appreciate that.
And now it's Nikita's turn.
Thank you, Megan.
Okay, I'm gonna talk a little bit about some pro tips,
advice I thought I would put together
after asking someone who it was their first DEF CON.
And these questions came up.
So that's why they're here.
After I finish my portion of the talk,
we're gonna open up to a short Q&A.
There are, there's a mic in the center aisle here.
So if you have a question that you wanna ask,
you might wanna consider lining up for it
in case it gets long.
I don't know if it will.
So one of my advice is don't forget your con badge.
We're not going to replace it if you lose it.
If you lost it, we're sorry for you.
That's really bad,
but we're not gonna give you a new one.
We're, if you are walking around with a counterfeit badge,
we're gonna take that out
and SOC's gonna have a couple of conversations with you.
If you,
are coming down to the parties,
bring your badge.
It is required.
A lot of people dress up.
They don't think about it.
They're wearing nice clothes or dresses or,
you know, cosplay or whatever.
And you forget to bring your badge.
And then you have to take the long walk back.
And it sucks.
Ask me how I know.
Um.
So the gentleman I talked to about said,
what's the one thing you used to forget to do all the time?
And I said, not get too drunk.
So after I was done working, you know,
I would go out to the sky boxes or the parties,
just like anybody else.
And,
and before you know it,
um,
you might've had a little bit too much.
And one of those experiences in the
Riviera,
I was the mobile bartender.
So I had a messenger bag.
I don't,
I don't advise you to do this,
by the way.
I had a messenger bag lined and filled with ice,
disposable cups, mixers,
and various forms of alcohol.
So people would come up to me and say,
hey, make me a drink.
Sorry, boss.
And I would do that.
And I would take the straw and I would taste it
to make sure that it was okay.
Yeah.
Never sample your own products.
It hit me like the wave of the heat
when you exit out of the airplane.
And I said, I gotta go.
I gotta go.
Peace out.
And I almost didn't make it to my room.
I ran into a goon.
I want to say his name was John Q Public,
but I'm not entirely sure.
And he was like, oh yeah,
we're not gonna leave you alone here.
So he helped me get to my room.
But if something feels wrong,
like if you have a suspicion that I've only had one drink,
why do I feel like this?
You might want to go and take a rest,
maybe talk to a goon, say, I don't feel good.
Something's wrong.
And then they'll take it from there.
They have a whole process and checklist.
But yeah, that was a funny story for me.
Just passing the advice on.
Sanitary supplies, tampons, menstrual pads.
They're in both bathrooms.
You can use whatever bathroom you identify with.
This year we have a sticker wall.
Please use it.
Please.
Yes, please use it.
And the last thing that I wanted to tell you about
is how to get the most out of DEF CON.
And what I would say for that is don't be hard on yourself.
If you're paying for yourself or having to do certain things.
Like you make a plan and you're like,
I don't know how I'm supposed to go here.
But this is vortex wants me to go hang out over here.
Just go with the vortex.
If you go where your heart wants.
You don't have to feel guilty about missing a talk.
We'll publish it online for free.
You can watch it later.
Don't feel bad about not getting to visit one
of the 32 resources.
villages it's a lot it's over it's half a million square feet so there is a lot
to walk around which reminds me where comfortable shoes don't think oh these
are nice Skechers air walks or whatever they have to get you miles some of our
goons put on 14 miles a day so it's a lot of walking and it's a lot of moving
about but back to that some some of you are here because your employer
decided to be written on your mind they would like that and they can come on
here with $10,000 for you dollars if you want me to walk from a little
chat okay thank you thank youdetach
he's coming from nowhere
he said it twice so we could get applause twice okay oh no no no oh sorry
so
So some of you are here because maybe your employer decided to foot the bill this year.
And that's fair, especially if you're new.
It's a safer bet to give us a chance to experience it when your employer is paying for some of the bill.
No judgment.
However, don't think about what does my employer want to see from me when I get back?
Like, what did I learn?
Because you are going to be really overwhelmed with all of the information and the things that you learned.
So instead, try to look at it as, what did I learn I can learn?
What things interest you and inspires you to make something better at work or for your team or to inspire you to take on a new project?
Which leads me to this question.
When you're walking around DEF CON, I want you to think, what do you want to spend the next 12 months doing until you come back?
A lot of you will flip from one end to the other and you'll see lots of things and get inspired to want to make a contest or do that thing better.
If you've got anything you'd like to say about something, please let me know.
We will be opening our call for contests almost immediately after the close.
Thank you
No, I'm talking.
Thank you.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
it was okay thank you it's funny it's like i'm the person that can text to make that go away
but i'm on stage okay so
yeah our call for contests will be opening almost immediately after the um the con is over
we have forums that currently have a whole bunch of different channels where you can interact with
the contests now if you want to contribute to what they're doing grow upon it add upon it
reach out and interact there's nothing wrong with introducing yourself that's just
that's just normal here nobody is like too unapproachable or too big or too rock star
that's not the culture that we support
we support knowledge and engagement and walking into a village knowing nothing
and walk out knowing at least one thing so um now i think i think we have a lot of time left on the
clock but if we'd like to open it up to any questions you could yell really loud or go to the
mic thank you
questions oh okay go ahead sir testing one two three let's see if they'll turn on your microphone
testing okay thank you all for putting this on in terms of fomo is it pretty safe to assume that
all the main stage tots will be recorded and then what about the villages and the tots there
yeah so uh all the main stage talks will be recorded and captioned in english and then
published later at some point as fast as we can and some villages i think you do know which ones
yeah there's a few villages that are having recorded talks in um our track five which is
kind of like near the contest area so some talks from car hacking village ar xr village
um a few others and there are some individual villages recording like appsec and i honestly
can't remember but they do exist okay thank you very much
one question okay anybody next
if not we'll just tell you stories
yes okay so raise your
hand if it's your first defcon i know raise your hand if you're international
okay now raise your hand if you're a fed
ah i saw it
uh
.
oh yeah how do you decide when you add more villages so um you might have noticed um some
people talking we constantly are sort of renewing and changing villages and villages come and go
based on their size the maturity of their group maybe the people who put together have moved on
with jobs so it's constant everything's in sort of constant renewal but we've tried to put a focus
on villages to be hands-on so the villages aren't just another speaking track but you can walk into a
village do a thing and then you're like hey i just learned how to do the thing um and that's sort of
the idea of a village um and so sometimes people tell you about how it was three years ago but
we're really trying to get more hands-on in villages and trying to move converse talks and
other kinds of events into different spaces so that what we do is we look at all the villages
we have a new submission will come in and we'll see well what's the history of the people involved
is it a good idea
like the what was it like the automated marijuana growers village you know and you're like what is
that and you look at it and it's like oh it's automation it's industrial control it's all these
micro controllers and you're like oh that's pretty neat and you try it for a year and you
realize nobody really win people got those skills in other villages and you're like okay well that
didn't work so we'll give that space to somebody else the next year so a lot of times we give you
a lot of space to try it out and we're like okay well that's why i think you should try it out
and that's why when you see villages that have a lot of space that's because they've been
repeatedly really good at delivering and small villages don't mean they're bad it just might
mean they're new and we follow the same thing for contests and events but as nikita will tell you
there's only so much space and so we have to make really hard decisions about which villages we're
accepting there's a bunch of villages that are really good at delivering but they're really good at
we would want to, except we don't have space for, essentially. Boy, the bass is really kicking.
So I actually bothered to come find a microphone. But as a first timer,
you got any cool swag you want to give me because I bothered to ask?
Does he get a prize for swag for being a first timer?
A first timer? I thought maybe you were saying first in line.
No, but you can buy a car hacking village badge in the morning if you get there fast enough.
And our theme is back to the future. That sucks, Capacitor.
Thanks, guys. Yeah, thank you.
Hi. I wanted to ask, so I have some experience in things such as like safe spaces and stuff like
that. But I wanted to ask, so I have some experience in things such as like safe spaces and stuff like
that. And so the SOC team sounds interesting to me, even though this is like my first time at
DEF CON. So my question is, how would someone join that or how much experience would they need
to have for it? Yeah, so your question goes more to how do you become a goon?
And it'd be interesting to hear everybody's stories on how, if they are a goon,
how they became a goon, because there are many paths to goondom.
Okay, hi. So there are a lot of different departments that have goons. Like I said,
all goons wear red shirts. So some of you have a lot of interest in certain things. And like
you said, you might be interested in being a SOC goon. What I recommend is that I personally
recommend that you attend a minimum of three DEF CONs as an attendee before you think about
even coming on staff. And the reason is this. Every year DEF CON is just a little bit different,
and we grow so much in that time. And you have the opportunity to see and experience and learn
new things. And what you think today might be really interesting, next year you might learn
something else. You're like, oh, but I kind of like that too. So it gives you a chance to
learn and see and really kind of get to know what the CON is all about.
And then I would say meet the people who do that job. If you are interested in becoming a SOC
goon, I recommend that you attend a minimum of three DEF CONs as an attendee before you think about
being a SOC goon. Meet us. Say hi to us. Ask us why we do what we do. And find out if it's really
for you. Because it sounds really fun until you realize that, friends, I did not follow the 3-2-1
rule. I got one hour and 38 minutes of sleep yesterday because it took that much to get my
department going. I have a department of 150 people that keep you guys rolling through the weekend.
So there's a lot to do. If you enjoy being on your feet for 12 hours a day and standing in
a three-foot space answering the same question 85 million times a day, then maybe the SOC is for
you or Info Booth. But if that doesn't interest you, then there's a lot of other things that you
can do. But again, I would say observe, experience, ask questions. Thank you.
Hi. Sorry.
I just have a quick question. There's a few talks that I'm really interested in.
They are the virtual hospital in space, hacking reproductive health, the microbiome.
They all said that they're virtual talks, but I can't seem to find the links for them. And I'm
just wondering when I can watch those. Have you checked on Hacker Tracker?
Yeah, they're on Hacker Tracker.
They just said-
That doesn't fit with the time.
They're virtual. They're listed for midnight last night, but there's no
other information.
Which village?
Which village is it?
I think it's the bioengineering.
The bio hacking village?
Biohacking, sorry.
They most likely might be on the Discord or on one of their own Twitches.
You might want to check out the Info Booth and see if you can get a little bit more information from them.
Okay.
Okay.
may be able to help. Okay, thank you.
Yeah.
He asked if there's more than one way to more than one path to becoming a goon if we were
interested in talking about that.
Oh, okay, he wants our stars specifically. No, we've never had a talk about that.
I can tell you my story. It's kind of funny. If you want to hear it. My first DEF CON was DEF CON
18. I went to the pool.
At the Riviera. And then we moved to the Rio, and then I met a bunch of friends, and I was like, oh,
hey, okay. So, again, don't do what I did. But I became a shadow goon. I basically kind of watched
what they did, and I thought, you know what? I have a lot of really interpersonal experience, and I
have a lot of crowd control experience. Once upon a moon, I worked for Disney, so, like, I can
move a crowd of people. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to
do this! I'm going to do this! I'm going to do this! I'm going to do this! I'm going to do this!
It stuff's so cool. And so they just were like, all right, clear this hallway. And so I did. And
they were like, okay, cool, come back tomorrow. So, I did that, and then I have a personal motto,
my personal motto is how can I make your day better? And so that really kind of I kind of went into
this talk with, hey, how can I make your day better? And they were like, hey, how can you not make our
day better? And I basically started the journey, I kind of sort of ended my experience with my family.
This was back before the no outside food or beverage was really in force.
We all remember those days.
I used to make handmade
homemade sandwiches and lunches for the Salkooms back when we were a department of 75.
So I made 75 meals for four days, 75 meals a day for four days for our team.
And that was how I could make their day better,
which was to keep them fed and hydrated while they were on the floor.
And as I did that, more and more things became evident
that things needed to be done within our department.
And so where there's a hole, I'm going to fill it.
So I just started taking on new responsibilities.
And here we are 13 years later.
I'm the, you know, the chief of staff for a department of 150,
and we're one of the largest of the DEFCON departments.
So it really does show like you just have a skill and you bring it
where it's needed and then you find a hole and you fill it.
Hi.
Hi.
Yeah.
So this is my first DEFCON and I was pretty surprised to see so many people
and especially so many people carrying cash and paying cash.
So I was wondering about the back story of managing cash.
So first, did you ever think of switching to something else,
like, for example, Bitcoin or or just outright
credit cards or whatever? And
also,
how do you get all that cash out?
And I mean, what do you do with the cash?
Is there really a problem?
That's pretty sus of you to ask.
Yeah, I know. I know.
But that's why it's interesting.
I mean, I think it's entertaining.
It would be interesting to know.
It is a production,
but it is a classified production.
But I would say that one of the reasons
why that we have our registration system as a cash based by design,
is to protect the privacy of people that are otherwise unable to
or concerned about putting their name in a registry
that could then be subpoenaed or collected.
That kind of has always been the culture for Jeff.
Sorry.
You know, things are really good now.
There's support and encouragement.
We've got policy village.
We've got people wanting to interact with us.
But back in the days when Jeff started this and for quite a while,
it was it you didn't want the feds to know who you were.
They were a little bit out to get you.
My goodness.
But as far as cryptocurrency is concerned, no.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's hard.
Yeah, there was I think it was mentioned in the Defcon documentary.
At one point, the hotel we were staying at, Alexis Park,
there was some sort of we never knew what it turned out to be,
but it was a counterterrorism investigation, supposedly.
And they pulled the records of everybody that stayed all at all the convention hotels
and anybody that paid with a credit card.
And we never even got a subpoena
because it was so well-known everything was cash.
There was nothing to get.
And so that probably saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees
by just not collecting it in the first place.
So I'm a big believer in this whole like, if you can't protect it, don't collect it
because it saved us.
And real quick to the person who asked about the schedule, Hacker Tracker already
heard your question and are already fixing it.
Yes.
Let let let them go to the waiting.
We want people waiting in line at the microphone to get priority
just so everybody can hear them.
Yep, I have to you.
Howdy.
I've got a question from the Discord.
Someone wanted to know about a.
What went into the decision for forming communities?
And how does it affect the communities, villages, exhibitors, et cetera, divide?
And then also, what communities are there?
Wow, spiking is weird.
Yeah.
So the community idea is sort of a work in progress.
But the idea is.
What's the EFF?
We put the EFF in the vendor room and they would for donations,
they'd give you some stickers and stuff, but really they're there to grow
their community and explain to the community what is the EFF?
Doing what are they working on?
What are their priorities?
And then you would have other community groups, right?
You would say again.
Yeah, you had women in WISP, women information security professionals.
You would have other groups that are organizing and
trying to find other people interested in their projects.
You would have, say, maybe what was the university?
Yeah, UAT.
But you would have people that were clearly not selling something.
So they're not really a vendor and they're not really running a contest.
But it's really important that they find their people and
communicate with what they're doing, ACLU, whatever.
So we decided, what we were doing is we were taking communities,
essentially, and forcing them to fit in either the vendor zone or the village.
And it just, it wasn't working.
And so instead, what we need to do is listen to what their needs are.
And if it's just tables and a place to meet and talk,
then why force them to follow all the requirements for a village?
So that's what we're trying, right?
We're trying to figure out the needs of communities that want to meet and
organize, but aren't really selling a thing or running a track of hands-on.
That's the idea.
Thank you.
Hello, hi, First Def Con, glad to be here.
Thank you for everything you guys do.
I've got a kind of important question though.
In the book that I got, it basically said, okay, goons are wearing red shirts,
and they have on hours and off hours.
And when they're on hours, they don't drink.
And then they have off hours and they can drink.
Obviously, everybody wants to buy a goon a drink.
But that didn't really discuss all the rest of the staff that aren't wearing red shirts.
A number of you up there aren't.
What's the policy that applies to the rest of you as far as drinking?
Yeah, so, I mean, I don't drink.
I drink during con hours.
I don't know if Nikita does.
You probably shouldn't.
I'm fucking with you.
Just fucking with her.
And so, to your first part, the red shirt, some people, we don't wear red shirts, because
if we did, we would never be able to get down the hallway.
And so, as like the HQ staff, the staff that's responsible for paying the bills and making
some of the stuff happen.
It's really important.
It's important that we get around quickly.
For operational departments, yeah, they need to be visible.
And you know, sometimes people do drink.
And if you see it, I don't want you to knock them out, but we definitely can't have drunk
goons in red shirts.
That is no, no, no, no, no.
That's a huge liability problem.
That's not what we're about.
So if you do see violations, please let us know.
Because.
We need to be held accountable.
And if you don't see us being held accountable, then you're not going to, you're not really
going to back us up.
You're not going to believe what we say.
So we try to create a system where we have a code of conduct.
We have a transparency report to show you that we're holding ourselves accountable.
And you'll see in that transparency report, every year, usually we let a goon go, right?
Because they've misbehaved.
So the rules apply to us just as it applies to everybody else.
I can definitely say that as a, there's a reason I didn't take a shot.
Like I said, you know, first time speakers take a shot, but I have to go back to work.
And so I felt like that would be violating the piece of paper that I signed when I came
here that said that I won't drink while I'm on duty.
So I hold myself accountable to that.
I hold our team accountable to that.
You know, I don't let the sock goons drink in the red shirt.
They.
If you see them off duty, they'll, you know, we all have the red badge.
So if they're in a red shirt, that means they're on duty and they're here.
We're here for you, especially the sock team.
We are the Department of Fun Enforcement.
We want to make sure that you are having a good time and that you are safe.
And we can't do that if we are not, if we're inebriated or under the influence in some
way.
So we just try to hold ourselves to that standard.
Other departments, I also believe have kind of the same conduct.
Because we sign that code of conduct that says that we're not going to be inebriated
or under the influence while we're working.
So but again, I can't speak for other departments.
I just speak for sock.
Okay.
Well, thank you.
We're going to wrap it up now.
Last question.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I thought it was you.
Yes.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Just one clarifying question about how badges work.
Like, I also knew that cash was the main payment method.
But seems like this year.
People.
People who pre-register, pay with card, got like a full real badge.
But people that pay with cash got the paper badge that doesn't even have like the puzzle
or any of their interactions.
So how does that work?
Well, it's not supposed to work that way.
Unfortunately, that's how it's worked so far.
So what happens is one of the things that we can count on is when people pre-register,
we know they're coming.
They've given us money.
Yeah.
We know they're coming.
We know they're going to allocate the resources.
And so as we were getting bad shipments, then we started having problems with the badge
manufacturer.
We had barely enough for the people who even pre-reged.
We don't think of the pre-reged people as anything different.
It's just it happened that the number of pre-reges was just slightly less the number
of real badges we got.
It's not a policy or anything that they get it and others don't.
And so I'll talk about it more tomorrow.
We're still getting more information from the manufacturer who has been very, very slow,
I should say.
Right now we're investigating flying somebody in an airplane to physically fly on Saturday
with more badges from the manufacturing facility.
I mean, we're trying every angle we could possibly try.
And as we get more physical badges over the next couple of days, what we'll do is we'll
swap out the badges for real badges, and we'll just keep doing that until we've run
out of people on airplanes.
But, you know.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Oh, you're sneaking in a question?
No, you're not.
Okay, great.
So I want to thank you all for coming.
We're all approachable if you see us.
But if you see us heads down running down the hallway, please don't be in our way.
We might storm right over you.
Again, thank you.
Again, it is what you make of it.
I hope that's something you take away.
And, yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, I thought you were going to say something.
No, no, no.
Sorry, go ahead.
That's okay.
And so one thing that we try to do when you're thinking about the difference, what's the
difference between DEF CON and, say, any other InfoSec conference, when we do look at villages
or contests or events or anything, we always say, is that hacker?
Like, it doesn't have to advance your career.
Being here is not necessarily about upskilling yourself for your next job.
Here is where you recharge your creativity and try something new and meet new people.
And so that's why we sort of try to be, that's what we mean when we say more hacker.
Your company doesn't care if you learn how to hack a PS3.
But here it might be really fun, right?
And so that's what we're about.
The mindset, not necessarily the latest, you know, attack against an Oracle database.
So thanks a lot.
Thanks to the panel.
Thank you.
And see you around the con.