This is the story about how I acquired a black badge from DEFCON (pictured above). We also hear the story about who PPP is, and their CTF journey at DEFCON. This episode was sponsored by Nord VPN. Visit https://nordvpn.com/darknet and use promo code “DARKNET”. This episode was sponsored by Detectify. Try their web vulnerability scanner free. Go to https://detectify.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=DARKNET Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A story about a disappointing party experience in a conference room with unenthusiastic attendees and uninspiring decorations.
DEFCON is the largest hacking conference in the world, with many events happening such as car hacking and pick lock villages, biohacking villages and social engineering villages. Additionally, other community-led B-Sides conferences happen all over the world and are free to attend.
Defcon is the world's largest hacker conference which features hacking-related contests such as badge designing, cracking passwords and more.
The narrator describes finding clues and solving a puzzle that involved finding an Ace of Spades and writing a password on it to hand to a sleeper agent, ultimately leading to the message "find code word ghost."
The black badge is a highly coveted symbol of success at Defcon, with teams working hard to earn one each year. Many people collect badges at the conference, but the black badge is the ultimate prize.
An individual shares a story about how a security research team was formed and began participating in 20-30 competitions per year, much more than other teams.
The speaker discusses their experience in a CTF competition where they were shocked to learn about a group of professionals and industry experts who only participate in DEF CON and similar competitions, leading to a lower than expected rank.
Online CTF competitions are different from in-person ones, with constant action and excitement and less downtime, allowing for more frequent participation and less rustiness.
A team shares how they won at Defcon by solving hard crypto problems in obscure architectures such as ARM and MIPS, which gave them an advantage over other teams.
Participants in a CTF competition experience feelings of relief, excitement, and happiness upon winning after years of hard work and dedication.
The speaker discusses their team's participation in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge and the skills acquired from competing in CTFs, suggesting picoCTF as a starting point for those interested in hacking.