Lifecycle
Badge ecosystems keep moving after handout: apps, hexpansions, SAOs, antennas, cases, repair parts, firmware updates, and post-event hardware experiments.
The official Hackaday schedule placed the Badge Hacking Ceremony on Saturday night from 22:00 to 24:00.
SourceThe official schedule data lists a Saturday 22:00 Badge Hacking Ceremony before the Hackaday Europe party.
SourceThe official CHCon 2018 event page says CTF, badge, and locksport challenges would run throughout the main event.
SourceSupercon ran badge-hacking awards for blinky, deadbug, over-the-top, and crypto-solving work, with public presentations and prize recognition after the event.
SourceHackaday announced a Saturday-night badge-hacking ceremony for attendees to show what they made with the Berlin Voja4 badge.
SourceThe official event schedule included a Saturday-night badge-hacking ceremony, and the heise report describes participants presenting judged badge hacks.
SourcePost-event coverage records custom cartridges, enclosures, C demos, color-palette animation, splash screens, and a Linux-on-badge SDRAM cartridge project shown through the ceremony and hack list.
SourcePost-event coverage documented camera, printer, charging, VR, thermal, time-lapse, and 3D-printer projects built around the official badge.
SourceThe 2009 contest drew 32 official entries, with Zoz's anti-surveillance system, Team Hack the Badge's sound-fearing blimp, and 501d3r Guy's multifunction dialer/voice amplifier taking the top three places.
SourceThe 2007 contest drew seven official entries, including Team Slackers' pGina single sign-on generator and Team Osogato's winning hardware/firmware line-level meter.
SourceGrand Idea Studio hosted a badge-hacking contest for obscure or mischievous badge hacks, including synthesizer control, TV-B-Goon, multicolor LEDs, flame effects, and Morse-code firmware.
SourceThe official CHCon 2019 about page says the CTF included cyber, physical, and electronic challenges across both main-event days.
SourceThe 2025 Hardware Challenge Village description frames the badge activity around electronic tinkering, programming, and competitive CTF play.
SourceThe Supercon 8 Add On Contest pushed entrants toward functional SAOs using I2C, GPIO, sensors, displays, radios, and other active peripherals.
SourceHackaday reports a Konami-code sequence, hidden behavior, and a Grand Challenge for hacked badges during the event.
SourceThe challenge required collecting musical faceplate measures across multiple badge colors and using the combined melody to unlock later phone, URL, and friend-code stages.
SourceThe badge and surrounding event materials carried clues, hints, mini-puzzles, easter eggs, and the start of a weekend challenge rather than firmware or electronics.
SourceChallenge writeups document suit symbols, 3-bit binary values, pi/e/Gray-code/LFSR ordering, program text, floor graphics, and badge comparisons feeding the badge-contest solution path.
SourceThe badge was a required tool for DEF CON's largest contest, connecting cryptology, social engineering, programming, and attendee interaction to the official entry badge.
SourceZoom, Intigriti, HackerOne, and CTF.ae challenge legs each produced binary flags that could be entered into the badge.
SourceHackaday documented a Sunday badge-hacking ceremony after roughly 78 hours of hacking, with categories for badge-only Vectorscope work and Vectorscope plus external hardware.
SourceRVAsec layout and CTF sources place badge hacking and badge-challenge material in the 2018 CTF conference flow.
SourceThe official RVAsec 13 layout places badge hacking in the event context.
SourceThe same official sources place the badge experience alongside a Capture The Flag competition, technical talks, hands-on workshops, and networking, but do not yet expose badge-specific challenge mechanics.
SourceThe GPN17 challenge page collected badge-hacking tasks, scoring, and prize context for attendees during the event.
SourceThe official page documents a second CTF firmware path and a flashing station near the CTF area, with source release promised after the event.
SourceThe official badge page and registration manual tie the badge to Hacker Challenge participation and document pairing the badge with the challenge server.
SourceThe registration guide says Hackers Challenge registration prompted for a badge ID and that the badge could show the current game score from the last 30 seconds.
SourceAttendees visited a Hut 6 station with a teleprinter-style receipt printer to receive intercepted messages for Enigma decoding.
SourceLayerOne's HHV challenge list tied the badge to Open Sauce badge work, ESP32 BluTag JTAG, RP2040 timing-attack exercises, and a custom shadetree companion-hardware target.
SourceThe official post says participants could start the CTF when registration opened on February 6, 2026 at 16:45, with the competition ending on February 13 at 17:00 or when three participants solved every flag.
SourceThe competition rules solicit hardware mods, 3D models, apps, games, and standalone firmware for the badge, and list public hardware-mod submissions.
SourceThe official schedule says BSidesPDX 101 covered CTF, contests and events, badges, and more, and the speaker page says the panel discussed the thing around attendees' necks.
SourceThe official schedule says BSidesPDX 101 covered CTF, contests and events, badges, and more on Friday morning.
SourceThe official post-event page reports the April 2, 2026 IUT de Saint-Pierre conference, about 80 participants, more than 10 CTF teams, keynotes, and conference sessions.
SourceThe official BSidesPDX schedule places Electronic Taxidermy: Badger Hacking in the workshop track with Michael Leibowitz on October 16, 2015.
SourceHackfest's official history describes 2019 as the pre-pandemic record edition with 1600 participants at the Plaza.
SourceThe Calagator listing says Security BSides Portland had PCB badges, T-shirts, and bags to give away, with donors receiving them first.
SourceThe badge sat in a broader hands-on event environment with soldering, hardware/chip-off, IoT, car-hacking, wireless, AI, open-source, and maker activities.
SourceBIC's 2025 event summary says badges and merchandise sold out and that proceeds helped raise funds for future programming.
SourceThe badge hosted a BENDER CTF variant playable directly on the badge while mirroring interaction over an RS232 serial connection.
SourceThe challenge server used distinct RF settings, periodic hints, player-state persistence, 88-miles-an-hour and 1.21-gigawatts stages, and an XOR/base64 unlock payload for the final box.
SourceThe official 2018 pages introduced digital currency into souvenirs, HITCON Token collection, and Hacker Cat upgrades alongside the Wallet badge context.
SourceBadges were assigned red, blue, or green factions and used IR interactions plus server-side logic to convert or level nearby badges during the conference.
SourceThe DEF CON 27 badge game used near-field magnetic induction badge interactions and role-specific badge types to advance through DEFCON letter levels.
SourceThe official guide describes Red-vs-Blue tower capture behavior as a team game played through the badge ecosystem.
SourceThe badge puzzle combined firmware, hieroglyphic shapes, binary codes, lanyards, venue clues, program material, and social interaction into a secret-society narrative.
SourceAttendees illuminated roots and branches of the badge's tree by completing conference tasks, with completion turning the badge into a sparkling tree display.
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