Because someone took the time to ask, this is not a “presale” for later delivery. These badges are shipping NOW.
The advantages to you, my worthy #badgelife devotees, are many. Mainly that you can fool yourself into thinking this badge is no longer included in your “badge budget” for Defcon. 🙂
Final firmware will be released on day 1 of Defcon, at which point the competition will begin. The firmware that we’re shipping now, which we lovingly refer to as “MVP” (Minimum viable product, I think someone called it?) has demos and other entertaining features. The final firmware will include the competition games. It’s easy to apply firmware later.
You can also use the time between now and DC32 to maybe write your own code and throw it on the badge. The instruction booklet includes pinouts, and help is available in our Discord server if you’re interested in pursuing that.
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.
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).
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 6th at 0900 and ends Saturday, August 7th 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.
One of last month’s meeting attendees, bless his heart, and I will hereafter refer to him as HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED, because I haven’t asked his permission… Gave these lovelies out at the meeting. I finally got around to looking at it, and SAVAGE! Good thing I got new tweezers.
So one of the menu options on the DCZIA badge is a BLE scan. I ran it with all my badges lit up, and it recognized TWO DC26 badges. I suspect that one of those is the TransIonospheric badge, because that one reported seeing the DCZIA badge…
This one is the Phase 4 Ground Trans-Ionospheric Badge, and it’s got a ton of cute visualizations on the screen, games, customizations (name and call sign), and even some actual contact logging/QSO functionality. Another one where the maker decided to undercut the eBay upsellers by doing another run (or maybe there were just leftovers, who knows?). Maybe this trend will keep the badge-scalpers at bay, and keep the prices down to “moderately outrageous” for those of us who can’t seem to say no.
I wish I could tell you which was my favorite of all the badges out there, but I can’t compare function to form in an articulable manner.
Better late than never. I think this one was released in time for subscribers to assemble it before Defcon. I slapped this together over the weekend. About the simplest project you can imagine. The switches turn the individual LEDs on, and the LEDs each have either a slow transition or fast transition IC built-in. The resistors are purely for decoration. It’s pretty and blinky, so I can’t complain.
The kit also came with a MicroPython PyBoard to experiment with. Going to have to steal some time to play with it, it really sounds like a lot of fun.
Received the Car Hacking Village badge today. The fucker has a beautiful display, nice fluid LED transitions, and an OBD-II port. Looking forward to seeing what its capabilities are. I know it has CAN and NFC capabilities from the website at http://www.specsolns.com/defcon…
