I went to DEF CON 33!
This was my first DEF CON ever and it was a blast! I was able to go with some of my friends from college. We’ve been talking and planning this trip for about 2 years so it was nice to finally be able to go after graduation last year.
I wanted to share my experiences with the con and what I have learned and tips for attending.
Day 1 (Line-Con/Badge Day)
The first day of Def Con was awesome. We got in early from our flight, dropped our bags off, and went straight to the convention center. The first day was badge day, or “Line-Con”, as the cool kids would say. Today was mostly getting your DEFCON 33 badge, learning the hall layout, and connecting with other people. The halls were closed today since they were still setting up. This doesn’t mean there’s no events being run. We ran into a table top exercise event in an un-marked conference room demoing the Meshtastic devices. This was completely by chance! After that, we met with some other industry members and went to some after hours networking events.
Day 2 (Day one of DEF CON show)
Today was mostly an exploration day. We took a few hot laps around the entire show floor and saw all of the booths. We then went and took a look at some of the DEF CON villages. Villages are smaller sub-groups/clubs within the DEC CON community. These can range from red and blue team villages to cloud, hardware hacking, and more. These are really fun places to hang out and meet people with similar niche interests to you in the cybersecurity industry.
After lunch we went to another networking event. This time we met multiple content creators such as Tyler Ramsbey - Hack Smarter and NetworkChuck! It was awesome to meet these people in person and thank them for the hours of free learning content they put out.
We then went to Area 15 for dinner–would highly recommend this part of town if you are looking for places to eat and hangout–they have some wonderful sculptures and fun stores and exhibits to explore, including John Wick’s Car!
After that we went back to the convention center to go see the arcade party. Here, there was a DJ and real arcade cabinets to play on. We also saw John Hammond and got to meet Jack Rhysider (Dark Diaries host)!
Day 3 (Walks and Talks)
The final day was lots of walking around the show floor to attend some talks! We started in the Red team village to look at the “Building Your First Windows Malware Loader” workshop which was awesome to see. It got very technical on the building blocks, design philosophy and tools to start experimenting, and creating malware (for educational and research purposes only). It was cool seeing the malicious code injected into memory in real time!
The next talk was about finding information on the dark web, which was an interesting concept . The final one was about finding real paths into Cybersecurity. This last one was amazing with the content creator Tib3rius, another industry member and former cyber hiring manager. They covered some amazing topics and shared great stories about how they got into the industry. After hearing this talk it made me even more motivated to advance my own career.
Things I learned
Wear a fun shirt!
I mostly wore plain colored business casual outfits, but what I saw from the con was that you can wear anything from plain clothes to a full suit; all is welcome! But if you wear a fun shirt (graphic tee, artwork, words, etc.), this makes it an easy ice breaker for people to approach you(It’s also a great way for you to approach someone as well and network!)
Decide what you want to do before your trip!
There is so much to do at DEF CON. Plan ahead and make sure you plan ahead on what you want to do. You could spend the entire time doing CTF’s or going to talks, etc.
Network!
This is a great time to meet new people in the Industry and with like interests! Take advantage of it! This industry is a referral one and it helps to know people!
Share your experiences!
This is meta but talk about your trip! This could be a blog post about your trip (Whether it’s LinkedIn or your own blog site.) or create other content like a video! This helps not only to boost community interaction, but also with building your portfolio.
Learning is Continuous!
Learning does not stop after school! You should always be striving to learn more, whether this is through meeting new people, creating a home lab or other ways to expand your knowledge such as certifications.
Tips
- DEF CON is at the LVCC West Hall (Other halls will be closed, this is the hall by the Las Vegas Marriott)
- The Vegas Loop (Tesla taxi car service through The Boring Company tunnel) is free for all attendees with a DEF CON official badge. NOTE: The Vegas Loop is only free for connections to the other convention hall stations; if you want to go to a casino station you will have to buy a normal ticket.
- Show up EARLY to the merch line on day one. The line will be multiple hours long if you don’t and everything will be sold out most likely by the time you get to the front. Otherwise if you show up early day two when the show floor opens they sometimes have restocks at that time too.
- Drink lots of water! Some days could be 110 degrees Fahrenheit!
- And have fun!
