New to DEF CON?
Find out what it's all about!
DEF CON has been a part of the hacker community for over three decades. Pick up a bit of history and origin by watching DEF CON - The Documentary, and by checking out the About Page. The DEF CON FAQ has the answers to most of the common questions you might have.
A treasure trove of hacking knowledge
awaits in our past media!
DEF CON Media Server. Speeches, music, art, and more!
For the big downloaders, check out our Torrents.
Infocon, the hacking con archive! Con video, podcasts, rainbow tables, and more!
Want to participate?
There are a myriad of ways!
DEF CON is what you make it. If you'd like to do more than just attend, have a look at our Get Involved page for ideas!
Year round, consider joining a local DEF CON Group, or get active on the DEF CON Forums!
DCT Seattle |
Nov. 2-3, 2024
DCT Paris |
Coming in 2025
DCT DC |
Coming in 2025
Call for Trainers
Attention DEF CON educators ! The DEF CON Training 2025 Call for Trainers is live!
We’re looking for unique, technical, and practical presentations from trainers with deep knowledge of their subject. If that’s you, let’s talk!
All the info you need to apply is at training.defcon.org.
Good news, everyone! We’ve already got some discounted room blocks you can use to lock down your lodgings for DEF CON 33.
DC33 doesn’t kick off until August 7, 2025, but that’s no reason to lollygag. If you’re a high-octane go-getter you already know how good it feels to get those To-Do items checked off early. If not, this is far enough ahead to forget you booked and give yourself a nice surprise when there’s one less thing to do at crunch time.
You can book at the Sahara and the Venetian now and get the DC33 ball rolling. We’ll keep you posted as additional options become available.
We’re already 2 months closer to the next DEF CON. Be prepared.
The DEF CON presentations are now live and available for your perusal on the DEF CON media server, free of all commercials, data capture or pesky algorithms. We suggest clearing some disk space and personal time this weekend to snatch up some of the many, many jewels our speakers dropped in Las Vegas. While you’re on media.defcon.org you can also find the slide decks, a ton of pictures and even the DC32 soundtrack. Enjoy, learn a few things and pass it on to someone who can use it.
We’ll be posting the videos on YouTube Monday.
Please enjoy Cory Doctorow's fantastic presentation on taking back the internet from last month at DEF CON 32. Cory's takes are always thoughtful, provocative and it was his deshittification concept that helped inspire the DC32 theme. More videos from DEF CON coming soon.
As always, pass it on.
The first round of Contest results are live! Congratulations to the victors, and thank you to everyone who jumped in to test their skills. Contest culture is strong at DEF CON, and we’re proud of all the ways the community finds to stretch, engage and expand our skills through friendly combat.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Missed your chance to cop the amazing DEF CON 32 badge in person? Good news! The DEF CON store has a limited number for sale right now. Get yours at https://shop.defcon.org/products/dc32-badge
Thanks again to everyone who came to DEF CON 32 and helped make it such a success! Here’s a preliminary rundown of what you missed in the press coverage of DEF CON 32 while you were in the LVCC hacking the planet or whatever. As always we’ll post a more thorough list in the coming days.
Artificial Intelligence:
Deepfakes are easy to make, but also easy to detect
Axios
World’s biggest hacker fest Def Con spotlights AI’s soaring importance in the high-stakes cybersecurity war—and its vulnerability
Fortune
DARPA competition shows promise of using AI to find and patch bugs
Cyberscoop
DARPA Awards $14m to Seven Teams in AI Cyber Challenge
Infosecurity Magazine
Aviation Safety:
GPS spoofers ‘hack time’ on commercial airlines, researchers say
WTAQ
Aviation Safety Threat: Aircraft Hours Can Be Hacked and Cause Serious Damage!
VOI
New Warning As ‘Frightening’ GPS Attacks Hit Passenger Planes—Fasten Your Seatbelts
Forbes
Badgelife:
Yes, the new Raspberry Pi RP2350 can run Doom (rather well!)
Adafruit
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 developer demonstrates running Doom on RP2350-powered Def Con 32 badge
Tom's Hardware
The Aerospace Village badge for DEF CON 32 is an aircraft position display
Adafruit
CTF:
Carnegie Mellon’s Hacking Team WIns Third Straight, Record Eighth Overall DEF CON CTF Title
Business Wire
General News:
Thousands of Corporate Secrets Were Left Exposed: This Guy Found Them All
Wired
The best hacks and security research from Black Hat and DEF CON 2024
TechCrunch
Millions of AMD *****Us found vulnerable to 18-year-old ‘Sinkclose’ deep-system flaw but it’s pretty difficult to exploit:
PC Gamer
Unpatched MS Office flaw may leak NTLM hashes to attackers (CVE-2024-38200)
Helpnet Security
‘Invasion of privacy’: Hotel room inspections confuse hacker convention attendees
Review Journal
DEF CON 32: the unfixable bug that allows malware to be deployed via a browser
Cybernews
Industrial Security:
Critical vulnerabilities found in Ewon Cosy+ industrial VPN gateways
Industrial Cyber
Project Franklin:
hDEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure
The Register
Pwnie Awards:
CrowdStrike president accepts “Most Epic Fail” award at this years Pwnies
Tech Spot
CrowdStrike President Shows Up to Accept 'Most Epic Fail' Award at DEF CON
Extreme Tech
Voting Security:
Can Online Voting be secure? Experts try to hack new platform
Dawn
Former officials warn campaigns to ‘buckle up’ — more hacks are likely
Politico
DEF CON 32 has wound down, and we want to thank our community for making this one stellar. You never fail to bring gigantic love and enthusiasm to every aspect of the Con, and we are inspired by your example.
The curveball of a sudden, late-stage venue scramble could have spelled disaster, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Having so much of the Con back under one roof felt great! FIrst years in a new venue always mean some hiccups and learning experiences, but you reacted with patience and grace when they happened. For this you have our eternal gratitude.
As always, if you want to keep that DEF CON feeling alive in the off-season, you can and should join a DEF CON Group in your area. If you can’t find one, we encourage you to start one (https://defcongroups.org). We also encourage you to check out our new project DEF CON Franklin (https://defconfranklin.github.io) to find ways to put your skills to work where you live.
As you return to your real lives, share your engagement ideas with us at https://defcon.social and we’ll amplify. Let’s motivate and encourage each other. Let’s stay engaged, with each other and the wider world.
We’ll see you again just one short year from now in this same charming little place. In the meantime, keep learning and making new stuff, and look out for each other.
☠️❤️🫵
Reg will be selling #defcon32 badges at the discounted price of $200. If you want to get an extra badge with the first ever RP2350 board for yourself or someone special, here's your chance!
DEF CON thrives on community collaboration and has operated for over 30 years successfully working with hundreds of vendors including the dozens that have helped with our badges over the years. For this year’s Raspberry Pi badges, DEF CON hired Entropic Engineering to do the hardware development and firmware. After going overbudget by more than 60%, several bad-faith charges, and with a product still in preproduction, DEF CON issued a stop work order. Any claims that DEF CON did not pay Entropic Engineering for its hardware or firmware development are false. Unfortunately, we heard that these issues with Entropic Engineering were not unique to DEF CON. We decided at that point to finish the badge on our own. We paid to send engineers to Vietnam to work onsite to finalize and test the badges in order to ensure they would be done on time for the conference. We never removed Entropic Engineering’s logo from our badge, it is still on the PCB. However, Entropic was not involved in the design and production of the case, and we removed their logo we had added as a courtesy.
We were happy to still include one of their contractors on the badge panel session. Unfortunately, shortly before the talk was set to take place DEF CON became aware that unauthorized code had been included in the firmware we had paid Entropic Engineering to produce, claiming credit for the whole badge and promoting their coin wallet to solicit money from DEF CON attendees above and beyond what we had negotiated. When asked about the unauthorized code, the engineer said it had been done as a “joke” two months ago and forgot to remove it, and we decided as an organization not to have him on stage while we kept the slides in the talk giving him credit for his work. We communicated the change in advance of the talk, and this individual decided to show up for the panel anyway. He refused to leave, demanding that our security team remove him. Wanting to ensure that the other people involved in creating the badge were able to deliver their presentation, we complied with his wishes and escorted him off the stage, where he was free to continue attending the conference.
Any issues of non-payment are between him and Entropic Engineering, DEF CON fulfilled its financial obligations.
Thanks to everyone who has reached out to us about the DEF CON 32 badge. We are aware of the save issue and a fix is incoming. Later today we'll have a patch and some instructions for you at defcon.org/badge/32. We'll keep you posted in these spaces.
You can reach DEF CON staff during normal hours of operation to anonymously report any behavior violating our code of conduct or to find an empathic ear! You can contact us via:
Voice Call, SMS/Text, or Signal: +1 (725) 222-0934
or Discord: @defconhotline
We hope you have a safe and fun #DefCon32!
Just a friendly DEF CON reminder for all our last minute folks - online registration for DEF CON 32 ends August 1. Cash at the door still works, though. Linecon abides.
New DEF CON 32 parrrty just dropped! Join us Saturday August 10 for ‘Yo Ho Ho, a Pirate’s NIght for Me! There’ll be a best-dressed pirate contest with a 460 dollar prize and entertainment from O’Craven (Insta: OCRAVEN),
NorCal’s most swashbuckling Celtic Pirate Rock Band.
For details and updates keep an eye on the DEF CON Music Page. We’ll see you there!
The wait is over- DEF CON 32’s Workshop roster is LIVE! We’re quite proud of the lineup! Registration opens at precisely noon Pacific on July 7.
Workshops historically fill up quite quickly so we recommend having a few choices and doing some stretches for maximum click-finger agility.
Good luck to everyone. Just over a month till DC32! Let’s GO.
The good folks at @defcon_music have blessed us with some big party info for #defcon32.
"This year’s theme for our Friday Night party is “Retro Sci-Fi“
Be sure to bring your ray guns, Thought immobilizers, Robot sidekicks and of course your best spacesuit!
Sci-Fi costume contest at Midnight!
Winner gets $460 cash!
(Costumes encouraged but not required.)
For more keep an eye on defconmusic.org.
We are enterning the home stretch, citizens of DEF CON! Just under two months until the curtains open - have you prepared yourselves?
The full roster of parties, meetups and events is live on defcon.org to assist in all your various pre-function planning.
Prior Planning Prevents Poor Partying, so get yourself familiarized. While you’re there, please make sure to check out the fantastic contest lineup DC32 has ready for you!
It’s within sight - just over the horizon. Feel free to get psyched.
See you soon!
DEF CON 32 #protip: On the desert planet of Las Vegas, door to door AC is worth its weight in water.
When choosing a hotel, don’t overlook our deeply discounted room block in the Rio. All our reserved Rio rooms are fully remodeled suites, and there’s a FREE shuttle right to DEF CON’s main entrance. No wasting your precious moisture on the burning sidewalks.
Also, we have it on good authority the the shuttle moves without rhythm so as not to attract the worm.
Check out the Rio room link now!
Thanks to the fine folks at Nautilus Institute the DEF CON 32 CTF quals are in the books - you can read all about it at https://quals.2024.nautilus.institute/. There's also a veritable feast of JSON dumps for the curious. Congrats to the winners, thank you to everyone who suited up and we'll see you in Las Vegas!
Attention packet wizards - the DEF CON 32 CTF Quals Begin May 3!
Our friends at the Nautilus Institute have created a fiendish test of skills that lasts a whole weekend, and the winner gets to compete for everlasting glory in the main event at DEF CON 32.
Will your team rise to the challenge?
You can get your hat in the ring by registering at https://quals.2024.nautilus.institute/
Godspeed to every mad genius who answers the call.
We’ve secured a block of deeply discounted rooms at the fabulous Rio, with FREE shuttle service to and from the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center! In addition to the door-to-door shuttle service, they’re giving us a big break on the room rate AND the Resort Fee. Rio also offers additional discounts for government employees
We love the Rio - it was home base for DEF CONs 19-22 - and you should see it now. It’s had a massive multi-year renovation and it’s new all over. New all-suites accomodations, new restaurants, new food hall, even a redesigned 5-acre pool complex. It’s a whole new experience at a steal of a price.
We expect these to fill quickly, so you should act accordingly and book now!
Spring has sprung. That means laughter in the air, flowers everywhere, and DEF CON right around the corner. In the spirit of new growth we’ve got another discounted room block for DEF CON 32 attendees - this time it’s at Resorts World. You can check the selection and book at this link.
Resorts World is the very large, very new hotel-casino complex that sits on the lot once occupied by The Stardust. It sports a location convenient to the LVCC, the very latest in accommodations and (so far as we can tell) no relation to Michael Crichton’s WestWorld and FutureWorld.
It’s all happening, people. Just a few more months till the big event. Prepare accordingly.