We just wanted to give a heads up to everyone to remind them that the annual layerOne hacking and security conference is coming up soon. They have announced their speaker line-up which includes talks on home monitoring, lockpicking, mobile malware and tons more. The event is located in Anaheim California on May 28-29.

They sent us sort of a press release with some information on the event and some details on the badge. You can read their email after the break.

The annual LayerOne hacking and security will be held on May 28-29,
2011 in Anaheim, CA. As always, there’s a great speaker lineup
(http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=85) at Layer One 2011. Some
highlights include John Norman talking about DIY Access Control
Systems (http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=85#arclight), Sam Bowne
talking about Layer 7 DDoS attacks
(http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=85#bowne), and Jimmy Shah talking
about For-profit malware on mobile devices
(http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=85#shah).

LayerOne includes a full fledged Lockpicking Village
(http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=105) and Hardware Hacking Village
(http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=103), both of which will have
demonstrations and training for those interested in picking locks,
cracking safes, making blinky lights, or learning how to surface mount
solder. This year will also be LayerOne’s first Tamper Evident Contest
(http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=45#tamper), where teams compete to
see who can best defeat mechanical, adhesive, and electronic tamper
indicating technologies while leaving no trace of their attacks.

This year’s badge will be a custom PCB that can be worked on in the
Hardware Hacking Village to make a mini synthesizer. Designed by
Charliex of Null Space Labs (http://www.nullspacelabs.com), it is
based on the open source meeblip (www.meeblip.com) and the AVR Synth
(http://www.elby-designs.com/avrsynth/avrsyn-about.htm). (The meeblip
is a reworked version of the AVR synth.) It has a 16 bit output with a
DAC that’s loaded 8 bits at a time. To cut down costs and assembly
time we used a simple R2R ladder and dropped off the amp stage, since
R2R’s pretty much rock.

The design was changed to surface mount (from through-hole); we don’t
have any through hole soldering equipment and it’s not 1980. The CPU
was switched to the ATMEGA64 or ATMEGA128 for those needing next-level
beats and more hackability. The MIDI interface is on a seperate mini
PCB that connects to the badge so you can play Rockband’s pro keyboard
or guitar. The pots were changed to linear slide and the switches to
momentary to save cost and space. Our intial meeblip version we
reworked at NSL worked out about half the cost of the original —
this one is even less than that. Both ISP and JTAG are broken out,
since the ATMEGA64/128 is one of the bastard children of the ATMEL
series. Finally, 20 charlieplexed LED’s were added because blinky
things are a must have at any premier security conference.

Speakers will have their own top-secret 4-layer PCB badges designed by
Krs (http://www.layerone.org/?page_id=85#krs), who is also giving a
short talk on their design and her experiences going from EE newbie to
designing complex PCBs in less than a year.

Sure, the creators might use the badges to make sure they meet all the lovely ladies in attendance, but the idea is to use the data to improve the conference experience for everyone. Attendees have the ability to add tags indicating their interests. Combine that data with actual location tracking and people can now network and interact based on what and who they’re looking for. It’s social networking coming full circle to include actual socializing.