Every year, Def Con attendees have much to look forward to at the conference, not the least of which is braving the heat, dealing with long lines at Starbucks, and pwning each other. And while Def Con packs more events, workshops and contests then the storage space of a Zip drive, one of the longest lasting traditions revolve around the mysteries of the conference badge itself.

This year, Def Con celebrates its 21st birthday with a card-themed cryptographic challenge based on the standard playing card deck. Except this is no ordinary card deck.

Attendees of Def Con 21 are all given custom badges, which are actually elegantly fabricated PCB boards complete with delicately carved copper contact points, mathematical constants, binary numbers, chinese characters and more.

In an improved and renewed focus on social engineering, Ryan "LostboY/lo57" Clarke provided additional details about the origins of this year's badge design, as well as the decision to revert back to a non-electronic badge for Def Con 21. Hackers are encouraged to mingle and network by comparing each other's badges and working together to make sense of the various clues embedded into each board.

Attendees find ways to gather data from each unique PCB badge while giving them a chance to meet other fellow hackers.

In addition to regular a'human' attendees, staff and press al... [Read more]