Author's Note: I was hesitant at best to make this post, but after several conversations with others, I am a disabled vet, and attended DefCon with another disabled vet. I was embarassed to have made use of the accomadations available and so neglected to write about day 2. This is my correction to that.
Day 2 resulted in us rolling in to the Convention center and heading to badge pick-up, and despite everyone’s warnings, the badge line was literally non-existent. I headed to the registration room and someone yelled at me to open my qr code before entering the room. Opening up the qr code from the registration email, I walked to a registration worker who booped my phone and sent me on my way.
The badge has been talked about ad nauseum but is worth a quick mention. This years badge has a RISC-v chip that is a social game, allowing users to scan qr codes and mix and match (through genetic “breeding”, Punnet Squares anyone?), the LEDs on their badges. After the conference, the chip becomes a FIDO compliant security key and OTP storage device :O !
From registration, we made the natural move to the merch-line. Viande_Morte is a cane user (while I don’t use any assistive technologies currently) so it was natural, after seeing the 3k or so people in the merch line for him to ask for assistance from a Goon. Much to xRichless and I’s surprise though, the Goon begun to escort all of us to the front of the merch line.
Here’s where my frustration for this post comes in. There’s a lot to be said about disability and the different ways it presents itself and such. And the degrees of physical disability. And the amount of assistance that someone needs to receive an equitable position, etc…
Did I need the assistance? Did I act inequitably? Would I have been able to stand in the line? Yes. Would I have been able to enjoy the rest of the Con and the compounding walking/standing/movement that would have been required had I stood in the merch line for hours? No.
So all that to say this, its your con. You deserve to be there. You deserve to be treated equitably. And DefCon has the appropriate policies in place to make sure you can get assistance, frictionless-ly. Shut-up, and take the assistance. Impostor syndrome be damned.
From the merch line, we headed out to the cafeteria and began to meet new friends. As we looked around for a seat, we noticed Shazi sitting alone and he quickly offered our party his seat. “What if instead,” I proposed, “you stay and we all become friends.” This actually didn’t scare him off and instead we found out our new friend was a helper for the week of the legendary Hacker Warehouse. While hanging out with Shazi we noticed a mifi device sitting alone on a nearby table. After swiping it and dropping it in a Faraday cage, we started talking to some more of the tables around us.
One of the gentleman nearby, OrdoOuroborus, had a sick rig of various types of RF, using it for mass promiscuous captures across the spectrum, then using AI to categorize and catalogue the traffic received.
Soon after, a random NPC appeared with a random CTF. The Aerospace Village was doing a crossword. And the winners could get a sick badge. Immediately, we set to work. We made short work of the crossword, figuring out classic clues and nerdy scavenger hunts alike (Anyone know the airport code of the airport named after a (non-pedophile) golfer? Better find it!) The crossword resulted in 32 highlighted letters, which descrambled to list a number of casino’s that weren’t mentioned as clues in the crossword. Needless to say, we didn’t win. But its amazing that the letters for Bally’s, Rio, and the others, can be arranged into MARS, COLONY, PLANET, RISK and other Aerospace related words. SMH.
Quick tip about puzzles and CTFs, sometimes going analogue is the answer. To start unscrambling the words, we originally tried various de-scrambling apps. Then finally xRichless decided to manually write out the letters in various configurations. (It helped that he’d just finished reading The Code Book by Singh (ISBN:0965073330) and had some novel thoughts about what transformations and manipulations might be at play. To solve for the complexity of such a long scramble, and to speed ourselves up, we decided to write all 32 characters on to cafeteria napkins, and start scrambling them around on the table until something came out. And, though we got the wrong words, it was a ton faster than typing or writing them out over and over.
After hours of crosswords and scramblings, we headed to the Lost and Found where we met a series of interesting Goons and got to shoot Nerf Guns for stuff, and got a handful of interesting and historic stickers.
Finally, our stomachs won out, and as much as we hated to leave the Con, a great off-strip hibachi place was calling our names.