DEF CON has a special place in my heart. I hate Vegas with a burning passion and that hasn't changed, but I am willing to tolerate that awful city for my favorite summer event. This time around, work even covered my trip! This DEF CON was mostly meeting people and putting faces to names. Seriously, that's like 70% of what I did. Sorry if you were expecting a deep breakdown of everything that happened at the con. I didn't do that. I just talked to a ton of people. If you were there, I was one of the two people who had IKEA bucket hats (allegedly). Anyways, I am getting ahead of myself. Onto Wednesday.

Wednesday

Meeting new folks at DEF CON happened before even boarding my departure flight. I bumped into one of my Paranoia party members, which was a pleasant surprise. I was talking to them, and their buddy at the airport for a little while before my flight boarded, mostly getting to know each other. On the plane I spent pretty much the entire flight reading Craft Coffee by Jessica Easto. After landing in Hell (Las Vegas), the three of us went to Harrah's to check baggage, before getting overpriced food at the food court. Eventually the three of us split up, and I walked to the hotel I was actually staying at. After checking in, I donned the IKEA bucket hat, and went back to the strip for a bit before going to the ZeroFox BlackHat party. The party mostly consisted of standing in line for a few hours, then slamming a few beers with some folks I was pretty eager to meet with. We then went to a few bars before eventually retiring for the night back at my hotel.

Thursday

Thursday was supposed to be my general "Meet internet strangers who I wanted to befriend" day, and it was fairly successful. I generally try to avoid outing people I associate with on here so I can protect their privacy, unless I specifically ask if it's cool with them, or if meeting them was very public (think scheduled events where that person is known to be there). I got to meet some people I would consider inspirations for myself and generally, they were even better to hang out with in person than online. I ended up hanging out with Paranoia buddy, and their friend again in the Las Vegas Convention Center for a few hours, and running around the convention center to meet people again. Later in the night I was invited to attend the TrustedSec BlackHat party by someone I know who works there, which was incredible.

I ended up meeting most of their Targeted Operations team, and even got to meet Dave Kennedy for the first time. Talking shop with those guys was mind blowing, they are crazy smart. Once we got kicked out of the party venue, we wandered over to Prohibition to get a few more drinks, before eventually heading to Shake Shack at the behest of some of the European members of that team. I then realized I hadn't eaten in like 12 hours, so I crushed a burger and shake before taking an Uber back to my hotel and passing out.

Friday

Friday, the con began in earnest. I ended up meeting some more folks, of course. A few people from the BHIS discord server, and also some from Mastodon. I stopped by the Cloud Village, and IoT village to meet some folks that I had been waiting to meet for some time. I also stopped by the Hack The Box booth to pick up some goodies for a certain Kraut I know who didn't attend, but wanted some stuff. I managed to stop by the BHIS booth and got to meet Deb, Jason, Zach, and Beau. Then I wandered to the vendor area and picked up a Pineapple, some accessories for my Keyport which I bought there last year, and Hacking: The Art of Exploitation by Jon Erickson as I have heard great things about it.

I then went to Red Team Village to watch the purple team panel, which while interesting was a little less interesting than I was hoping for, given the topic was about the Microsoft breach last year. I talked to Kevin, one of the panelists afterwards and he felt pretty much the same way. We then got some food and split ways. I went to relax on a chair on the 3rd floor of the Convention Center for a bit, got a ticket for the Packet Hacking Village's Machine Learning workshop, then went to my hotel. I spent some time messing with the Pineapple to get it booted up and the latest firmware loaded onto it. I then started working on my next project for an hour or two while watching Hacker Jeopardy, and finally went to bed right after.

Saturday

I had meant to get up early enough to make it to the pwnie awards, but I slept through my alarm. I wandered over to the convention center, and got some coffee. A college friend and coworker showed up in Vegas for his and his wife's anniversary, so I ended up leaving the con to get together with them and get lunch at Yard House. After lunch, we split ways and they went to the Sphere for the Grateful Dead concert while I attended a meetup.

From there, I went to the Packet Hacking Village to attend their workshop on packet analysis with machine learning. Once I wrapped that up I hung out by Wall of Sheep to watch how they manage to process several hundred gigabytes of packets a day. Frankly, its impressive. It's just a Raspberry Pi 5, with an NVME drive. I'll pick up the stuff for this, and help out on Wall of Sheep for a bit next year, especially when I am tired of walking around and want to sit for a bit. I dig the vibes of that place, and think it'll be a good fit for me to kill time there next year when my feet are telling me to sit and chill for a bit. I then met my Paranoia guy and his friend again, and we went to the food court and talked to random strangers for a few hours, before taking off and going back to our hotels.

Sunday

Sunday, I was just exhausted. I basically sat around the whole day. I ran into Jason and Deb again on my way out to my Uber to the airport. I got to the airport early, ate a shitty sandwich, then crushed a smoothie, boarded and came home.

After Action

I love DEF CON. Frankly, this DEF CON was pretty much my ideal DEF CON. It was a blast. I will of course be attending again next year. If my fellow IKEA Bucket Hat guy is somehow reading this, please get in contact! I want to meet you next year! Also, there were a ton more interactions I had which I didn't cover, because the post would be way, way too long otherwise. So if I missed you, I'm sorry!