This summer I attended the famous hacking conference DefCon in Vegas. Overcame the fear of extreme heat (it is +45C in August!) and expensive flights. And haven't regretted it at all!

What's it like?

This year it happened in LVCC (Las Vegas Conference Center) which had more than enough space to fit everyone and every talk imaginable. All of the talks happened in "quiet mode" with the headphones (with some people trying to hack the audio channels :)), and even though it was my first time, long timers said it was much more well organized than the past times.

Generally it's just 2 and a half days of the conference.

The conference is mostly talks and the villages, which I found most interesting - a lot of exhibitors presenting their projects, and it's split into multiple categories. What I like is that unlike polished business oriented conferences, no one pushed anything to sell and everyone was happy to share what they built, what they work on, teach something. Well, except for some organizations pushing for donations. But considering work they are doing (like EFF), they are welcome to do so.

Villages

So there was aerospace hacking (satellites). I successfully landed an commercial airplane in a simulator in extremely bad weather conditions with GPS instruments intentionally spoofed, and earned a "medal".

A lot of participants are into meshtastic. This is a non-internet radio mesh-network chat that operates on 868 (EU), 915 (USA) or 433 MHz (non EU Eastern Europe). You connect the device to your phone and can talk to other meshtatic users, or organize personal encrypted chats, and this is becoming quite popular. So much that it inspired me to get my own. Some people call it "Tinder for Linux users". There were talks, how to hack those, and workshops how to build one. (Upd: where I live now I hardly was able to find any nodes around me even at the train station, but I will definitely take my device to the next conferences)

A HAM (radio amateurs) village - they explained how it's done these days (I was surprised that it's mostly digitally encoded now, good old analog radio communications seem to be relic of the past. Even though some people still do morse code for fun). They demonstrated over the radio BBS networks, explained how the audio is used to transmit images, and so on. There even was a free full-day workshop and a free HAM license exam, but the license is only good for the US based radio operators.

There was a village about hacking boats, cars, with corresponding CTFs and challenges going on the whole conference.

One section was dedicated entirely to design of fancy electronic badges. The badge itself is a huge topic for this conference, with challenges embedded into it. This year it was about LED colors with people connecting to each other via camera over QR code and their led colors getting mixed when they connect. And I haven't figured out what the actual challenge was with the badge (well, it had a usb connector...)

There were simpler challenges - one of them was building your own directional Yagi antenna out of pieces of metallic measuring tape, they have a device to measure how good it is, and then you search for "Foxes" hidden around the huge LVCC building.

Some people were decoding radio signals with an SDR receiver (a lot were using Hack RF One). Some were hacking bluetooth. Some playing some kind of laser tag with their special laser badges.

There was an open DefCon Wifi network. And as I was explained in the Packet capture village it was not safe to use. In the village they have a large screen called Wall of Sheep, where people were hacking unencrypted connections. Although as almost everyone involuntarily is using some kind of encrypted ssl/https, this is less practical nowadays than before. It is recommended to use mobile network though over any kind of wifi near the venue, and keep your portable devices bluetooth and wifi always off. In my opinion the venue's encrypted wifi is ok, but perhaps with a disposable laptop.

An unusual social engineering village was memorable, with somewhat suspiciously looking and talking people. They had a workshop on tips and tricks how to sound convincing over the phone to get the information you need. Then there was a practical class with calling real companies in order to make them do something or answer certain questions (with no real harm intended, just for the sake of learning). It was sometimes funny sometimes it felt like it would be very easy to give up what they want.

Malware village talked about obfuscation, and interesting persistence techniques.

Satellite hacking village was interesting, they explained how things worked. Nowadays they often launch "cubsats" which are literally cubes thrown out of rocket when it reaches the orbit.

Lockpicking is classic at DefCon, so there is a section teaching how to open the locks and trick domestic intercoms into opening the door.

Socializing

The second day ended with parties. Different villages organized their own parties, apart from that in LLVC itself there was a movie night (with weird computer movies), karaoke, some drums session. I met quite a lot of people there.

The lunches are also a good reason to find someone sitting alone and just start talking. I talked for half an hour with a girl that just sat next to me, - turned out she was working in the same field.

What was unusual is how easy it was to talk to people. DefCon is mostly Americans. Students, indie hackers, military (there were AirForce people), even government, and they seem more open than conferences in Europe.

Vegas

The Vegas heat became bearable the second day. The last day in Vegas I completely got used to it, even though I moved mostly on foot. The air is very dry (drinking water is essential). The day-sun is unforgiving (better get some umbrella to walk in a shade). "Don't let dehydration ruin your vacation".

Interesting fact - under the LVCC complex they have underground tunnels with Teslas taxis, that are free to ride around the complex, but are paid if you'd like to go outside). It is called LVCC Loop.

The Vegas itself (The Strip) is comfortable if you walk the air-conditioned casinos and venues, which are enormous. Unlike the rest of the city, the center is beautiful and "expensive-looking". But what's funny - none of the local people that I talked to play casinos or gamble. "This is the fastest way to ruin your life" - they say. This is all for tourists.

There's a monorail kind of tram that mostly goes along the Strip (but also visits LVCC). But the taxi itself is not extremely expensive.

The distances like everything in America are huge, this is definitely not Europe. So unless your hotel is located in a walking distance from LVCC, you'd want to use some of those (and I don't recommend $2 buses). Just get an internet first.