DEFCON 33
DEFCON33
DEFCON has really strict rules about photo taking as many people in the industry are quite strict about their identity!
This August I got the chance to attend DEFCON 33 with NUS Greyhats! This was an insanely cool experience for me as I have always wanted to attend DEFCON but didn’t know I would get the opportunity so soon!
The Villages
Physical Security Village
Considering we were not allowed to own handcuffs in Singapore, this was a really cool experience getting to cuff myself and practice getting the cuffs off! There were a ton of setups of various types of locks, from physical doors to digital doors, and even a car door! Feels like knowledge you wouldn’t need but could save you someday too!
The RTVCTF
Of the CTFs happening the one we decided to play was the Red Team Village CTF! This eventually led to us getting the Black Badge which was something they only decided on the last day of the event, and the first time ever RTVCTF got to give out one!
Red Team Village
The RTV also hosted many talks and smaller presentations throughout the day! An interesting talk I attended was on “Initial Access Tactics on MacOS”, where the two reasearchers showcased some basic to advanced ways to bypass MacOS gatekeeper to drop malware into a system without requiring the user’s explicit approval via settings. Unfortunately the researchers did not upload the code to github like they promised :(
Meeting My Idols!
Was one of the first few infosec youtubers I watched! Learned a ton of foundational knowledge from him.
Similar to liveoverflow, really cool to meet john hammond in person, who was who got me interested in malware analysis in the first place!
I’m sad I didn’t get to see LaurieWired :(
Some fun activities
AresX
Got to meet some of our online friends from the Aresx CTF team! They were competing in the main Defcon CTF among the best in the world! It was insane to watch how some teams had custom built LLMs constantly running to solve challenges!
5n4ck3y
A CTF that lets you earn a cool hardware badge by completing a ton of interesting minichallenges! We played this together on the side after RTVCTF, but by the time we finished, they unfortunately ran out of hardware badges… but I got a locktite which I needed too!
Physical copies of Phrack everywhere!
Physical copy of phrack!!! Felt insanely cool have a physical copy of such a historical magazine, probably one of the coolest things I got from this DEFCON. (Plus it was free!!!)
Tinfoil hat CTF
Create a tinfoil hat with 3 pieces of foil and compete in either Red(receive) or blue(block) team in blocking various signals from different locations onto a mannequin head!
Getting a spoofed AppleTV connect request
Always fun to see people spray exploits! Apparently they try to connect and request passwords
The Furries!
First time seeing someone in a full fursuit! I’ve heard about this but the attention to detail is insane! Thank you random furry for letting me take photos with you :)
Visiting Los Angeles
