Help Decipher The DEFCON Badge

The 23rd DEFCON — the Western Hemisphere’s largest hacker conference — doesn’t start until tomorrow but Thursday has become the de facto start for regulars. [Brian] and I rolled into town this afternoon and are working on gathering as much information as possible about the badge challenge.

This year the badge is a 7″ vinyl record. Traditionally the badge alternates years of electronic badges and ones that aren’t. Spend your weekend pulling your hair our trying to solve the puzzles. Check out all the pictures and information (updated as we gather it) and work together collaboratively for a solution by requesting to join the crew on the Badge Hacking page.

Hackaday Breakfast on Sunday

Iocn of Coffee CupIf you’re in town Sunday morning, come nurse your hangover with [Brian], [Eric], and me. We’re headed to Va Bene Caffè at 10:30am on 8/9/15. It’s just across the street in the Cosmopolitan. Request to join this event and I’ll send you a reminder so you don’t forget. You can also hit me up on Twitter for a reminder. See you then (and don’t forget to bring hardware to show off if you have some!).

PS- The Hackaday WiFi Hat is in play. Anyone have the chops to hack it this year?

25 thoughts on “Help Decipher The DEFCON Badge

  1. well for the most part id connect the vinyl to a usb port and run an emulator on the track as it plays then watch the serial terminal for clues, past badges used serial messages, also id probally focus on the relavence of the actual uber badges since they contain trace elements. because im in palmbeach logged on to the con remotely i can only use the information i can collect from my position….. more then likely they will be certificates for encrypted connection, like 509 and pgp….. ask the dark tangent here….. https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dtangent.html
    or hack it out! – I would also guess that playing all the vinyls at the same time would make magic, or atleast some varaince to this, Thirdman Records came out with a vinyl record that could hold some clues aswell, check it http://thirdmanstore.com/jack-white-lazaretto-12-vinyl

    for the most part i dont wish to show up in person at the con so ill be stuck a week or two behind the attendees for the most part, however i did solve the crypto challenge from the DefconXX (one of the first to solve- months after the actual con end date =) DefCon31334XX
    ps.. peace out!
    ima Ghost (;P)

    1. The major issue here is that you are dealing with VERY noisy analog signals where things like the quality of the needle, cartridge, amplifiers, ect are going to affect the amplitude and noise of the signal. You *could* try to digitize things and then grab digital values to use as ASCII, floats, ect. But, chances are, if they are there, your digitization method will not pick them up with enough precision and accuracy for anything to be usable.

  2. Remember the old bird in the cage trick? Bird on side, cage on the other. Spin it on a string real fast and persistence of vision shows the bird in the cage. Just thinking.

    1. I to have a usb/midi record player, one was so inclined or if anyone is curious to see what else may lie in the groves and live in palm beach county let me know you can use a pgp key ID so I can check the MIT database for your email =) I feel like the only real hacker in the county that isnt trying to mod something but is actually trying to create something new… I was taught the old school wayz working my way up from D:/crack to designing my own OS’s and combining software or script kidie work with black hat magic and a touch of GOOGLE to recycle old tech for new applications. I currently RUN a one man show, but I am registered with the state to do buisness and currently have a need to collaborate on a few projects ive been compartmentalizing as TOP SECRET due to the advanced aerospace concepts that are involved with some of the design work. I run a think tank out of my grandmothers home and am working on three main projects if anyone around is interested to work with me, 1 is a mix of anything and everything, 2 is an auto HDR digital camera that uses a phone sim on a GSM/R platform to remotely and most importantly, securly transmit photos directly from capture to cloud storage solution. the entire camera would run off a google cloud platform and the storage would be a custom cloud solution with its own photo server to ehance the photo sharing experience Encrypted and securely without any need for end user knowledge of anything other then turn on turn off press shutter release and visit their online website that they can share and link to social and developer platforms. 3 is an aerial reconnisansace drone using a mothership colony configuration and design, having the mother ship dis batch baby drones to enhance mission efficiancy and cost, these baby drones would transmit all data to the mother ship drone as they gather intel on multiple targets simultanously, then once the mission is over they will escort the mothership back to a designated data drop point and then remotely to a nearby base station to recharge and refit for its next mission.
      I have everything but a US GRANT to fund this project, and JPL is to busy trying to land on mars, I even offered them the ideals of using a multi stage multi engine multi fueled drone that would chemically compensate for any atmospheric annomallies while in sustained flight! they didnt write back. w/e =P

  3. whelp the text on the records are in written using Shavian, the Press(back) disc says:
    if hes not
    one thing hes
    another

    note: they are not following the true encoding on Press(back), they are doing one for one using the sound letter for Latin counter part
    AKA H = Shavian letter Hung T = Shavian letter Tot.

    only other thing, I can mention, it may be in QuikScript/Read Alphabet, instead or some may be.

  4. I hesitate and even a bit embarrassed to admit this, but the first thing I noticed is the spindle hole at the pelvis. When put on a turntable, the spindle projects through. So female to male. Koriban’s translation sort of keys in on that “if hes not one thing then hes another” and of course hes is a misspelling of she as well as a misspelling for he’s

  5. I say the Dark Tangent and 1o57 seek out some kind of grant from the cia to decrypt KRYPTOS as the crypto challenge at defcon (2016-17) then ask thier corprate sponsors to cover the admission fee and maybe subsidize the hotel room costs or the flight costs so for someone like me it is finnacially attainable to get to the actual con and share in person the actual knowledge. if the con keeps going like this it may be cheaper to attend a black hat in asia, posibly more exciting aswell! I can cover up too $100USD (food and water) anything else is asking to much of me as im one step away from living on benchs and showering in public libraries…. I would walk there if i lived on the west coast… even better why dont you ditch the ULTRA music festival theme style and just have the con rotate the country hitting midsize cities like Palm Beach Convention Center, or hooking me up up with a much needed internship. I work for free but demand a hotel room a mini fridge stoked with redbull and fiji water, and i guess i can live off PBJ for another year or two….I honestly hack to make things that cost money or are reserved for the $elite$ available for free like free wifi… free software, free help, I dont mind starting at the bottom since ive already made it too the top twice, once in China and once in India and once in Tibet if you consider it a seperate state as i do.
    can some one tell me who won the CTF defkor or PPP and can someone please game the system with me its getting bored online I am looking for hot asian chick who will not tell me how stupid americans are and will have freinds too which i may hack/develop with, also ive litterally been running machines making them do my dirty work since I was around 4-5, also I was a volunteer for Wikileaks (as a ghost like most my volunteering) and I really really want to work for either or GoogleX/Google or the CPU company Tilera, Defcon and or collaborate with these companies to produce products and services for the next generation, for heavens sake Im like a social engineer before it was cool and a hacker when nobody carred and now im a developer and people care about hackers, so I say this
    Why you going to play cards when you could play a game of chess?

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