DEF CON 30
Table of Contents
1. Overview
DEF CON 30 (August 11–14, 2022). Caesars Forum, Las Vegas. The 30th anniversary of DEF CON.
TODO: confirm attendance.
2. Badge
Badge materials: media.defcon.org.
3. Badge Cipher — Six-Stage Pipeline
The DC30 badge is the richest multi-encoding pipeline in DEF CON badge history. Six stages, each using a different encoding, culminating in a rickroll:
| Stage | Encoding | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DTMF tones (village badge) | audio | 01906967 |
| 2 | Morse code (blinking pixel) | visual | TREVORSDATE (memorial to Trevor Roach, d. 9/23/2017) |
| 3 | ROT13 | herewegoagain |
urerjrtbntnva (URL path) |
| 4 | T9 predictive text | antitrust |
268487878 (phone number) |
| 5 | Epoch subtraction | 1660323600 - 742323600 |
918000000 |
| 6 | Book cipher (DC30 program) | page/para/line/word coordinates | first letters, read backward |
Final plaintext: nevergonnagiveyouupnevergonnaletyoudown
This is the canonical example of the encode tool's "try and see" workflow. Three of the six stages are directly testable:
Stages 1 (DTMF audio), 4 (T9), 5 (epoch arithmetic), and 6 (book cipher) require domain-specific tools beyond the encode pipeline.
4. References
- DC30 Badge Challenge Writeup (GitHub)
- Badge media files
- Reversible Pipeline Transforms — the theory behind the tool