ready I all right so I'm command code
see our altitude so how many in the
audience have actually been the dark
that before DEFCON DEFCON end darknet
both who's actually participated in dark
net before who's done more than one
contest before DEFCON 10 one challenge
that contest believe you don't count
really that's it all right well then
you'll learn a lot about it this time so
pay attention during this presentation
especially the presentation itself there
will be two ciphers in the deck I'm
going to stop here and let everybody
take a picture of this because if you
actually want to do the ciphers you'll
need this also wouldn't hurt if people
want to make an audio video recording
please definitely feel free all right
there you so we wanted to try to frame
the discussion of the dark net this time
in a little bit of a creative way I mean
ask the question is the dark net itself
a cipher and we'll use that question as
a motivation for describing what the
dark that is and how it works and talk a
little bit about our history and how we
run it a cipher in my you know in my
thinking has a lot to do with the
context right in order to solve a cipher
you may need some particular context
some setting some historical background
some particular thing that you're
playing off of in your in your setting
in order to make it so that it's a fun
cipher for people to solve or in the
case of for example soft cipher you do
not intend for people to solve something
that will make it distinct for your
group of people that will distinguish it
from other groups groups of people so
that they cannot solve it
and the darknet share some similarities
with that the darkness is a contest that
we run at Def Con every year it is
characterized by being set in a
particular fictional world the context
is that there's been a pair of books
written by Daniel Suarez the demon and
freedom in which he proposes an
interesting premise what the world might
look like a little bit further on from
now in a sort of dystopian future that
is characterized by artificial
intelligences of a very minimalistic
kind that actually have a lot of power
over our world so the kind of cool part
about this is that you know about eight
or ten people came together initially
for sorry but eight or ten people
initially came together and started to
form a set of challenges that we call
the dark net at Def Con every year it's
now grown to 35 40 different volunteers
last year we had thousands of signups
hundreds of players all during all
strictly at Def Con ranging and it's
basically an online game to teach you
everything from soldering all the way to
sign language and about 20 different
things in between the yeah exactly the
purpose that we sort of started out with
was the idea of creating a fun event
with complex challenges some of which
were ciphers themselves but the idea was
to get people moving through all parts
of Def Con so that they could be lightly
introduced to all the parts that they
might not normally be able to feel
comfortable with or accessible for them
and be able to start handling those
kinds of challenges so you know if you
think about this the way I think about
it is just like August fourth 1936 is a
context the context of the you know
initial kickoff of the most important
war of the last century World War two we
of course have the DEFCON darknet being
a also context-based challenge in which
people participate too
publish these Def Con related goals so
another thing that you might focus on
when thinking about ciphers is that
ciphers have a very rich history and
that rich history informs how the cipher
is developed I'm sorry how it is a
position for people to be able to solve
and the kind of the history of it can
also be an interesting set of clues that
we send people off on in order to be
able to solve them so just like a cipher
the darknet also has a complex history
in our organization we started off a few
years ago with just a couple of
volunteers in a world that was very much
based off of this fictional world from
the demon and freedom written by Daniel
Suarez but we've grown significantly
since then we have now over 20
volunteers we've produced an immense
amount of content we sold in aggregate
thousands of badges we've written a lot
of code and we've done this all to
support this event that actually
attracts hundreds of people every year
and we're very excited about that and
and sort of behind the scenes the
interesting part of that is that there
are thousands of hours of volunteer work
that go into putting it on every year
and this this sort of historical basis
is definitely relevant to this
comparison of the darknet as possibly
cypher something that's interesting that
people might not you know know is that
these kinds of events that we put on
tend to cost a lot of upfront money that
we attempt to recoup recoup in the form
of badge sales and it's a significant
amount and the logistics the
organization of the team and the the
planning that it takes for a bunch of
volunteers that have no other purpose
for doing this other than that they're
extremely interested in producing these
educational challenges for people and
getting ciphers and other kinds of
technical learning in front of people is
it's kind of it's kind of cool
now also like a cipher the darknet
depends on a certain set of mechanics
there's in every cipher there's some
interesting mechanic that's going on
some operational features some
mathematical algorithm or some
relationship to set of symbols that
characterizes how the the cipher works
and similarly the darknet is like that
and a good example of that and the
algorithmic world is of course the the
20 minimum 20 algorithm which is as you
all know an algorithm that takes the
permutations of a bunch of independent
variables through a set of complexity
algorithms and arrives at a final answer
of course the darknet too has its own
mechanics and there's roughly four
different global pieces of the darknet
that we would like to talk about the
first is the story the second is the
badge and the hardware component and
then we have the software and the
logistics of running the event the story
itself as I mentioned before is based
off of the stories from Daniel Suarez I
highly recommend you take a look these
are some really cool books about a very
near future very realistic possibility
of how limited artificial intelligence
becomes involved in global politics and
global economics and then from there
there's also the badge which I'll give
it two teenagers so before i get into
the badge there is last year we had 25
some odd volunteers and about four of
them wrote our story and if anybody
followed it on Def Con last year there
was this near psychotic level of
twittering between fake accounts and
people talking to one another and all
kinds of things it made for a lot of fun
but these are these are all volunteers
that go off and do this like zero said
we have we literally had to break the
team down into separate work stream
this year so that we could actually
organize it so there's like every other
Tuesday there's a meeting and this has
been happening since Def Con of last
year since august of last year every
every two weeks the team meets and the
workstream leaders meet and then each
work stream meets at some other
frequency to heat things up to date and
these work streams range from the quest
that we write every year to story the
badge itself coming out here logistics a
hardware art hard wagga alright so the
badge this last year this year is still
in the works last year we had this or
salt we had to get all the hardware
figured out we got it we laid out the
board ourselves that at all manufactured
wrote the firmware I wrote the firmware
and we had to source all the parts so I
like to go on vacation once a year want
to buy the parts six weeks before we
headed to Def Con and the place that I
bought the parts form cancelled my order
as I was getting on the cruise boat so I
panic leak all 0 and say hey can you
order these parts because they cancelled
the order for some reason key please do
it he orders them I get back to that
date back a week later and he's like hey
by the way the parts got cancelled again
so now we're like t minus four weeks
before def con starts and we don't have
the MCS so the actual processors for the
board all the other parts are ready to
go just not the actual brains for the
whole thing that was fun some panic
calls to a couple of sourcing providers
and we finally got it in that's kind of
the evolution of the badge it's not the
entire evolutionary one badger for the
one on the right but the one on the far
right was a Navy are based badge that
basically just did I are the second one
is that basically that same badge except
it has a ir as well as a i squared c 1
inch display
and then last year that's in cortex m0
with a full t9 keyboard so the
old-school push it three times to get a
C type thing and I won't show you this
year's but I guarantee you this year's
blows all three of those away it's it's
really coming together nicely if you're
interested in seeing how the badge code
worked from last year there's the github
for it we put everything up every single
year including the final boss quest this
past year we actually had a bought quest
where the agents needed two agents other
players of the game need to actually
answer quest fast enough before this
fictional character was a Mad Hatter
this year Mad Hatter this year was
attempting to break into the dark net so
they needed to finish enough quest to
keep ahead of it and get his nice screen
up where it was showing that the players
are winning or if they were winning and
had to go back and forth all night and I
think somebody finally won about 4am or
something like that but the final boss
class which was basically a simple
telnet server you had to connect to and
send the right command to but of course
they got Dione's denial of service
attack they got it got all kind it was
it was a lot of fun it also has the
eagle board so file so if anybody wants
to actually get their own boards made
those work too and we do that every year
what did the badge have it on the last
year at I are pairing so every badge
came with a public/private key pair you
could not communicate using the 915
megahertz transceiver until you I are
paired with somebody that added it to
your messaging to your context then from
your contacts you can sit there and send
text messages to each other there was
quests on there that involved an enigma
John Conway's Game of Life it's a set of
Diagnostics and all that fit in 20 k a
ram in 64 kick-ass or 64 k of a flash ok
Google for software sure behind the the
badge and the quest there's a fairly
sophisticated software that the group
develops it involves the quest writing
engine the engine by which we enter in
all the challenges
and then the game running engine which
evaluates the challenges for each player
and shows the user interface and handles
the website and all the other things the
software is kind of cool actually I'd
love to talk about it at greater length
of course we only have a limited amount
of time tonight but it's based on a
reactive front-end that communicates via
web socket so that we can broadcast
messages in real time to players as
they're playing via push notifications
we have an API layer that's based on the
latest and greatest serverless
technology this is all right now
currently running on amazon web services
for almost free we have an API layer
that is based in Python and connects to
our databases through that and then we
finally have a go server engine that's
running the basis of the game engine
that serves the WebSockets that also
handles all of the real time players not
really the right word why did you slip
absurd a server no absurd I'm the DBA
I'm absurd about oh yeah it was there's
a there's like there's literally
billions literal literally billions of
sequel functions it's amazing it's a
it's a cool system it allows actually
the cool thing about the sequel
functions is that the Python and the
gopher uh backends barely have any logic
in them they're all embedded in the
sequel layer and so there's um there's
an incredible ability to share Lodge
across those layers by simply
abstracting those out in sequel
functions and and that's awesome
actually well believe like this color
our appointment Lori Def Con 25 25th
anniversary of Def Con quarter quarter
century it's going to be amazing it's
happening early this week early this
year i should say movie night shows this
week it's happening early because of
some crazy logistical snafus that happen
with the DEF CON planning group I'm I
hope that y'all show up that'd be pretty
cool how many becoming the Def Con this
year yeah
how many are companies have come to
share if you guys enjoy the villages
downstairs and you enjoy the badges and
all that sort of thing go first of all
it's in Vegas come on come on how hard
is that second of all imagine those
villages down there but every one of
them be in the room a size of what the
whole conference is downstairs that's
what you like it's amazing I and the
doctor will be there I'm just saying
that yeah we'll be there the darknet
challenge will be there this year a
greater and more awesomer than ever I
also want to point out that you can play
the darknet challenges online in advance
will be releasing a case file or our
teaser affectionately affectionally
known internally at the marks movie
teaser and people can play online and
participate with us and join in the fun
DC darknet you can go there now take a
look at what's going on so framing this
entire discussion was the overarching
question of whether the dark sand is a
cipher no no it's not it's a it's not a
cipher yeah sorry about that it is it's
an event we hope you guys come I'm Joe
altitude I'm coming a code if you guys
come to darknet stop by there was a two
ciphers running in here whoever gets
them reach out to either myself or zero
you can find us on darkman are on a
discord if you go to CC dark don DET
there's a link to our discard channel
going there if you can hit either one of
us up and tell us what the final answer
is for both of them come see us at Def
Con you get a free badge yep and will
also be around tomorrow if you want to
drop by the the the recital the crypto
village will be around on the off during
the day so please um come find us may
even drop hints who knows ok says thanks
any questions to any questions no
questions communicated perfectly got it
all right it's your argument over a
mouse from this distance it's a bigger
crowd expected it to be yeah a couple
hundred people huh good let's look at
her speaker bed I want to vga
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track master okay there's not gonna be
anything unless the video works give a
video person oh no my screen changes
like it's like it wants to and then
nothing happens this is where I turned
like a dumb user and I don't know
anything let's go in the bathroom what
hey video ah there he is no bathroom
breaks loud for a dream you're holding
that I I know he's talking here make
this work man yes course o'clock in 30
seconds oh my gosh thank you