Lira Black

August 12, 2022August 18, 2022

DC540 – Tarot Card Badge Games and Instructions

Instructions and General Help

Game 1: Tarot Card Trivia

Navigate to ‘Game Menu 1’ within the badge. You can choose to either practice or play. The practice option will allow you to refine your tarot card trivia information. When you are ready, select play and get 15 of 20 questions right in order to pass this challenge.

Game 2: Steganography

Steganography is a way to hide text in pictures. There are many ways to go about decoding steganography but I would suggest starting with a simple decoder found on Github https://stylesuxx.github.io/steganography/.

For this game, the steganography is hidden within our very own DC540 Shitty Deck (also featured in the badge but use the deck located at our GitHub Page. You’ll need to decode three pictures and then concatenate the answers to get a six-digit number. This six-digit number is what you will put into the badge.

Game 3: Tarot Card Reenactment

For this game, pick your favorite tarot card and reenact it. Take a picture and post it to our DC 540 Tarot Badge channel to receive your six-digit code. Be creative. Have fun.

Game 4: Scavenger Hunt

Find 10 of the items pictured on the Rider-Waite tarot deck to include:
– a Fool
– a Magician
– a Hermit
– a staff
– a robe
– Lovers
– old school scales
– a pair of knee-high peasant-looking boots
– a throne
– a white dog
– an Angel
– a chalice
– six cups
– eight stars
– a chariot,
– YOU MUST INCLUDE a picture with another person wearing the DC540 Tarot Badge

Post your photos to the DC540 Tarot Badge Discord channel. Once you post all 10 items and we’ll send you the six-digit answer to this game. Points for creativity (not like points really matter but you do get imaginary DC540 points).

Game 5: Tarot Flashcards

Navigate to ‘Game Menu 2’ within the badge. You can choose to either practice or play. The practice option will allow you to refine your tarot card flashcard knowledge. When you are ready, select play and get 15 of 20 questions right in order to pass this challenge.

Game 6: Personalized Tarot Card Deck

We at DC540 created our own terrible Tarot deck. To get credit for this quest, create your own deck. It must be original and posted to DC540.org/shittydecks to share with the world. Send us a message on our discord channel DC540 – Tarot Card Badge and make sure to include @DC540BAAB and @LYRATHEDAMMED in order to get credit for this game. We will send you a code and you can enter it on the badge.

Game 7: Morse Code

Have you ever wanted to learn morse code? This game will help. We have two modes – practice and play. The practice mode will display the letter, number, or word on the screen, and then the badge will “flash” in morse code. When you feel confident, you can select play. You will have three separate strings of words displayed on the screen. Use the left (dot) and right (dash) buttons to type out the morse code. If you get all three right. The badge will “flash” the morse code and let you pass the game.

Game 8: Decryption

There are three encrypted messages which can be found below or on the badge. Each of the three ciphers has a piece of the final answer. Your final answer should have six digits.

Cipher 1: Hsle td esp yfxmpc ehpyej-escpp?
Cipher 2: dGhlIGFuc3dlciB0byBsaWZlIHRoZSB1bml2ZXJzZSBhbmQgZXZlcnl0aGluZw==
Cipher 3: Mhv bnfbvf rhu rfx eofybgg wck bs kvx ttfabv nlauxr ft mbtrbbnm.

Game 9: Malort Recipe

Malort is the alcohol beverage of choice among the DC540 members. Make your own drinkable recipe using Malort and share on the Discord page. Have fun and be create your own

Game 10: NFC

In a previous post, one of our members describes his NFC tag stickers. There are several of these distributed about DEFCON. We will drop hints on Twitter and our Discord website. This will provide a clue to the next sticker location. Find all the stickers and locate the code you need to enter into the badge.

Game 11: Tarot Badge Pair

Find another player wearing a DC540 Tarot Badge. Go to the Extras menu on the badge and select “pair”. Once paired, you’ll pass this game. While you are at it, say hello and get to know a fellow DC540 badge player.

Game 12: Boss Pair

There are at least two DC540 Boss Badges wandering around at DEFCON 30. They belong to several of our DC540 members. Introduce yourself and give us a unique sticker we can add to our collection to pass this challenge.

As a hint, we will be posting on Twitter occasionally or find us on the Discord site and ask us to meet up. Two of our handles are already included in this document but another Boss Badge holder was instrumental in programming this badge. His name is all over the documentation.

Important Tips and Hints

The DC540 Tarot Card channel can be found using the permalink located on the right side of the DC540 website’s home page. If you run into issues or questions, you can reach out to @DC540BAAB and @LYRATHEDAMMED on Discord.
Games do not need to be played consecutively.
If you reset the badge you lose the games you won.
Any answer that you have to input will be six digits long and consist of the numbers 1-4. For example, the answer for a game might look like 112114
Once a game is won, the badge will light up in a pattern and a red LED will stay lit in the corresponding number on the wheel.
Complete all twelve games to win. The first person who completes this game during August 11-14th and brings their badge to one of the DC540 founders wins a prize (To Be Announced).

August 6, 2021August 6, 2021

DC540 ‘Tree of Life’ Games

How to Enter the Answers:
– Once you get the Answer, go to the http://dc540.org/question.html website and enter in the Question number, the answer, and our badge ID. Take the eight-digit number (unique to your badge) and enter that into your badge.
– A couple of notes: even if you put in the wrong badge id or answer, an 8-digit code will be returned, so be careful.
– When entering the numbers into the badge, make sure to lock in each number with the right button and then submit. If the answer is wrong or you didn’t submit correctly, you will be dropped out of the game answer area.
– There is a Discord invite on our main DC540 page but look for the dc540-tree-of-life-badge room.

Game 1: Crossword Puzzle
– There is a Hitchhiker’s themed crossword puzzle on our website or the one included in your bags. Complete the crossword puzzle, snap a picture of the completed puzzle with answers written legibly and send it to us on Twitter or Discord IN A PRIVATE MESSAGE with your badge ID (that 16-digit sequence starting with an ‘e’). You can also deliver it to us in person. Once we verify you completed the puzzle, we will send you the answer code to enter on the badge. Our Twitter Handles and Discord Usernames are at the bottom of this instructions.
– https://crosswordlabs.com/view/dc540-2021-badge

Game 2: Lockpicking Challenge
– Go to the lock picking village and learn how to pick locks. Videotape yourself picking the lock and send us the video to our DC540 Twitter with all the hashtags or feel free to also send it to us privately. Once we verify you completed the challenge, we will send you the answer code to enter the badge.

Game 3: DC540 Website
– Check out the ‘History of the DC540 badge’ and enjoy the pictures on our website.

Game 4: Twitter Challenge
– We have hidden some information on our DC540 Twitter Page. Nothing too complicated but check out our feeds, find the information and decrypt.

Game 5: Scavenger Hunt
– Make sure to be courteous and ask for permission before taking pictures of anyone.
– To ensure the following photos are yours and yours alone, make sure you are in the picture. Extra points for creativity.
– Take pictures of ten of the following items, add a hashtag, and post on our twitter page. Make sure to send us a message (to our twitter) with your username when you found ten of the below items and posted on our Twitter:
– A Sheep
– A Carrot
– The “Welcome to the Fabulous Las Vegas” Sign
– A brochure from a wedding chapel in Las Vegas
– A photo of you next to a man/women who has a mullet
– Take a picture of an impersonator.
– A photo of you with a Roman Guard at Caesars
– Poker chips from 3 different casinos
– Green Craps dice
– Post card with the Eiffel tower on it
– A picture with Elvis
– A picture with one of the M&Ms
– A tiger
– A picture of a person wearing socks with sandals.
– A bike “cop”
– Photo of a man with a handlebar mustache
– Ceiling in Bellagio
– Pink Flamingos
– Floppy Disk
– Picture with a DC540 Boss

Game 6: Morse Code Challenge
– Go through the Morse code menu and you’ll find several Morse code challenges. One is the answer, but the rest may prove helpful. For a bit of fun, when you pair with a boss, Morse code will flash. Hurry up and write it down and make sure to let us know what you’ve found. The answer (when input into the generator) will not have spaces, capital letters, special characters, or numbers.

Game 7: What do you know about the Ham Radio?
– The theme of DC29 is “Don’t Stop the Signal” if we do end up in a world where communication becomes more difficult, could you grab a ham radio and know what you are doing? The questions and answers are only displayed once and your answers will not save if you leave the game early. You will get a random set of questions from a larger question bank, Answer 15 of the following questions correctly and pass this challenge. You won’t know what questions you get wrong. Then maybe go take your entry level Ham Radio license (there is a Ham Radio village at DEFCON).

Game 8: Badge Pairing with another Player
Pair badges with other players and check out some of the default messages or send your own. Be careful, you’ll have several good or bad hints you can send to the other person. You know if the message you sent is helpful or not, but not what the message is. Hopefully, they treat you the same. Make sure to write down the message you receive immediately. It’s not saved anywhere.

Game 9: Hide and Seek Part 1
There will be three DC540 founders at DEFCON. You can put your badge in “Boss Check” under the Phonebooth menu and it will search for our three Boss Badges wandering DEFCON. Your badge will light up when you are nearby a “Boss Badge”. We will occasionally post on Twitter our locations or hints. We maybe wearing DC540 paraphernalia. Find us and to get the code you need by completing one of the following: sing a lullaby/song out loud, show us a talent (idk, impress us), bring us a SAO for our collection or a cool DEFCON sticker or anything else you think would be worthy of winning this challenge (or just bribe us with a beer).

Game 10: Hide and Seek Part 2
Now find the another boss badge.

Bonus: For those coders/badge enthusiasts and all-around tinkers, feel free to explore our badge and make suggestions for code improvements or

Twitter Handles: @skullsinblack and @dc540baab
Discord: ‘Lyra the Damned#5380’ and dc540#3865

August 2, 2021August 4, 2021

History of the Tree of Life Badge

It’s time to tell the tale of how the DC540 “Tree of Life” badge came to be and memorialize its compiled history into one grand telling.

The badge had humbled beginnings as all great ideas do. Our crew had long wanted to conceive our own glorious badge. A badge that was both aesthetically beautiful but also offered more. We played around with several different themes that stretched from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lovecraft, an Escape Room to Ham Radio.

We quickly learned the importance of identifying which hardware we wanted to use early on. Initially we played around with the ESP8266, found that it wasn’t robust enough for our grandiose plans, moved to the ESP32, and then abandoned all for the pico. Our OLED screen changed quite a bit as well, with us at one point using a 1.8 inch SPI TFT LCD Display module. While lovely, cost and other practical implications kept us from pursuing a larger OLED. We were loath to have the badge burdened down with batteries and needed to keep it light.

It was the end of May where we finally got serious. At one of our in-person meetings, the whiteboard came out and we started scribbling. In the next two hours, we had more forward progress than the last 6 months. We made some guesses on how much parts would cost, our general “theme” and some potential games. Shockingly, we were pretty on point with our cost estimations and were able to keep our final product at the $50 mark per badge.

Bob played around with many ideas for the badge design and finally had inspiration with the “Tree of Life” theme, in a fit of creativity, he quickly produced one prototype after another, making each one a bit better. He used KiCad for the board designs and then gave us all a lesson on how he did it. Our imaginations went into high gear as we started planning our future badges and Shitty Add On (SAO) we could make.

Taking a closer look at a suspiciously complex program

Our first prototypes came in unexpectedly quick which was a relief, we were a month in and had little more than a month to finish up the project. Kevin worked hard, rewriting the libraries and code, each time one of us fortuitously had another good idea that resulted in more work for him. Critiques included morse code had too much fade when flashing, the badges didn’t just need to send messages to each other but also have default messages hidden inside, badges had to flash in a spectacular manner when paired with a Boss, and I needed more menus! Oh, let’s not talk about the great hash wars where we debated the merits of each encryption and nearly stopped talking to each other. At one point, I swore Kevin hadn’t slept for a week and had developed an uncontrollable twitch and would yell “no more” every time I spoke up, even when it was just to say hello.

The development of the games was especially frustrating as the goal was for the games to be very achievable by new DEFCON attendees, offer a way for people to interact with each other but still be challenging. I learned a lot about steganography, stegdetect, githubs Steganography online, using WordPress, a member helped by created a Hitchhiker’s themed crossword puzzle, the intricacies associated with morse code (using ‘dah’ and ‘dit’ over ‘dash’ and ‘dot’ and so much more.

One particularly important lesson was learning to speak “developer”. What made sense in my mind didn’t necessarily make sense to our developer and how he envisioned code. There was many nights of butting heads, exasperated sighs and outright frustration over the lack of communication.

Finally we had the boards, now it was just time to solder and assemble them. In these desperate times, we called everyone together and had one large soldering party, troubleshooting any connections that just weren’t right, cursing, and drinking more whisky to sooth our burnt fingers.

I made sure to tweet- from my sweet mountain overlook

Now the last step, playing the games, traversing the rooms in the badge and seeing what would break. I hid away in a the Shenandoah Mountains for a weekend and did nothing but drink more coffee, try and break the badge and code, and debug away. With only five days before we would leave for DEFCON, we had a product we all agreed was magnificent. Our last Monday before we left, we double checked each bag, wrapped them in bubble wrap and carefully placed them in a baggie with batteries, stickers and a lanyard.

Our last task would be to hand them out at DEFCON and enjoy.

Well, except we ordered 50 more badges just a week ago, so it seems we will be packing those up and shipping them out once we get back.

Oh, and our war-torn developer just happened to ask about our next big product…..he’s already got a suggestion and we’ve begun to brainstorm away.

#game3

August 2, 2021August 6, 2021

Post 2: Game Rules for the DC540 “Tree of Life” Badge

****** DO NOT PLUG IN THE BADGE TO A USB IF THE BATTERIES ARE INSERTED ******
If the power switch is off, it is probably fine, but use your judgement.

The DC540 Tree of Life badge has ten interactive games that can be played during DEFCON. The games vary and some can be played on the badge (morse code, ham radio questions) while others are interactive (conducting a scavenger hunt, lock picking, decoding ciphers). An explanation of games and more detailed instructions will be posted on the DC540 website Friday morning August 6^th at 00:01.

Overview

The games do not need to be completed in a specific order.

Five of the games will require you to send us proof of completion. These games are:
– Game 1 (Crossword Puzzle)
– Game 2 (Lock Picking)
– Game 5 (Scavenger Hunt)
– Game 9/10 (Boss Pair)

For Games 1, 2, 5, 9, and 10, the game instructions will provide direction on how to obtain the answer but make sure to always include your badge number in your correspondence.

The other five games do not require interaction with a DC540 member to complete. Completing the game will either automatically unlock the badge or provide you with the answer.

Include the following hashtags on anything you post on Twitter when you solve a challenge.
#dc540 #badgelife #dc540scavengerhunt

Alternatively, you can post on our DC540 Discord Channel “dc540-tree-of-life-badge” or message us on Twitter or Discord (preferably both).

Twitter Handles: @skullsinblack and @dc540baab
Discord: ‘Lyra the Damned#5380’ and dc540#3865

As the game progresses, hints and other updates will be dropped on the dc540 Twitter page (and that of the two main characters) if certain challenges are proving too difficult.

When all ten spheres are completed, the badge will FLASH RAPIDLY FOR 5 minutes. Be advised, that it is intense, and be cautious if you are nearby other people as this has the potential to trigger seizures or epilepsy. Send us a picture of all ten rooms lit up from completing the challenges. We will announce winners on our Twitter DC540 Page.

Understanding the Badge:

There are six buttons on the badge.
– The four buttons on the left function are: Up, Down, Left and Right
– The Left Button allows you to erase a previously input character.
– The Right Button will allow you to “lock” in each character.
– Up and Down scroll through the characters and numbers.

There are two buttons on the right. The top button allows you to submit, and the button has a surprise but IT is also there for you to get creative.

Entering Answers:

When you complete each game, you will get a case-sensitive answer.
– Go to http://dc540.org/question.html, select the question number, the answer, and your badge number.
– You will get back an eight-digit number that is unique to your badge.
– Write down or save that number.
– From your badge, go into that corresponding game, and enter that eight-digit number. You will need to “lock” in each digit and then submit. If you for the answer correct, the badge will correctly flash and blink for that challenge.

The answers are case-sensitive. Once you complete a challenge and put the answer into the badge correctly the “room” lights up.

Prizes:
We do have prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. More information to come.
First Place: 100K DEFCOIN
Second Place: 10K DEFCOIN
Third Place: 5K DEFCOIN

July 17, 2021July 18, 2021

DC540 Badge and Game

While numerous LEDs, an OLED screen, and a stunning design on a completed badge are all commendable achievements in their own right, the DC540 does nothing in moderation. For our first badge, we would not stop there, we wanted to stress ourselves unnecessarily, develop new skills by constantly troubleshooting and redoing processes, test to the max our patience and group dynamic, all in designing a game for the badge.

So, I’m rather excited to announce that the DC540 badge comes with an interactive game that can be played during DEFCON. This game is meant to be a way to enjoy DEFCON while still experiencing the conference. It is a path to make the whole experience more fun for those who are completely new to the scene. This game does not require any serious skills and some challenges are just meant to be a way to get out there and experience Las Vegas, DEFCON, meet fellow hackers, and have a good time.

The game begins Friday, August 6^th at 0900 and ends Saturday, August 7^th at midnight. We will be around Thursday and throughout the CON for anyone who wants to purchase a badge and play the game.

What To Expect:

The game consists of ten challenges (one for each Sephiroth (sphere) in the Tree of Life). A detailed list of the challenges will be posted on the website early Friday morning (6 AUG). As you solve a challenge, you will receive a code that must be manually input into the badge using the buttons. The code will unlock the challenge which then lights up the corresponding sphere on the badge.

More information on the game will come in the following weeks as we continue to perfect it.