DEF CON 34

Table of Contents

1. Overview

DEF CON 34 (August 6–9, 2026). Las Vegas Convention Center.

Call for content.

2. Badge

TBD.

3. Villages (Cipher/Encoding Relevant)

Prioritized by relevance to the encode tool and reversible pipeline research:

3.1. Crypto & Privacy Village

Launched 2014. Talks, CTFs, Gold Bug Challenge (named after Poe's story — see examples). Privacy-enhancing tech, facial recognition, crypto backdoor laws.

3.2. Badgelife Village

Badge Museum, SAO trading, badge creator talks and workshops. History of badge ciphers across years. The badge.life archive.

3.3. Packet Hacking Village / Wall of Sheep

Network forensics, packet analysis, Capture The Packet (Black Badge contest). Packet interception and decoding — the network-layer version of the encode pipeline.

3.4. AI Village

Hands-on LLM security. Drop-in workshops on prompt injection, agent pentesting. HalCTF: write your own pentesting agent. Relevant to agentic encoding/transformation pipelines.

3.5. Embedded Systems Village

Hardware hacking, firmware analysis. Badge RE skills. Non-profit (501c3).

3.6. Ham Radio Village

Amateur radio, RF, Morse code, antenna design. Direct connection to the encode tool's morse codec and DC29 lanyard cipher.

3.7. Quantum Village

5th year. Open quantum hardware. Quantum gates are unitary (reversible) — direct connection to the quantum computing section of the research.

3.8. Red Team Village

Offensive security tactics, CTF. The "try and see" workflow the encode tool supports.

3.9. Social Engineering Community Village

Vishing competition, Battle of the Bots. The human-layer encoding: persuasion as a non-reversible transform.

4. References