DEF CON 26 · United States · 2018

AND!XOR DC26 Badge

Unofficial DEF CON 26 ESP32-WROVER Wild West of IoT badge

The AND!XOR DC26 Badge was an unofficial DEF CON 26 badgelife board themed as the Wild West of IoT, built around an ESP32-WROVER module with WiFi/Bluetooth, a color LCD, microSD, IS31FL3736-driven RGB lighting, CP2102N USB serial, LULZCODE scripting, the B.E.N.D.E.R. console challenge, and badge-to-badge networking ambitions.

AND!XOR DEF CON DEF CON 26 United States Las Vegas Unofficial Badge ESP32 ESP32-WROVER WiFi Bluetooth LULZCODE B.E.N.D.E.R. SAO Badgelife North America

EventDEF CON 26

SeriesDEF CON

LocationCaesars Palace and Flamingo, Las Vegas, Nevada

CountryUnited States

Image Provenance

Asset: optimized WebP crop from Wikimedia Commons documentary photo
Status: licensed original photo derivative
Source: HackerCon Badges.jpg
License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Attribution: Sephiroth storm, Wikimedia Commons
Notes: Original 3252x2720 Wikimedia Commons documentary photo downloaded from File:HackerCon Badges.jpg and preserved in Public/images/source. The published WebP delivery asset is auto-oriented, metadata-stripped, cropped to the visible AND!XOR DC26 badge, and otherwise kept as a real CC BY-SA 4.0 documentary-photo derivative. The crop preserves the visible black western-themed board, active LED, and nearby conference-badge context; this is not generated content, a placeholder, or a copied article/gallery image. The published badge.gallery delivery file is an optimized WebP generated from the rights-cleared local derivative/source with metadata stripped, WebP quality 82, and a maximum side cap of 1600 pixels when the source is larger; upstream source URL, license, and attribution remain unchanged.

People

Authors & Credits

CC BY-SA badge photographer

Sephiroth storm

Wikimedia Commons identifies Sephiroth storm as author of the HackerCon Badges.jpg documentary photo used for the AND!XOR DC26 crop and licenses it under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Source

Hackaday hands-on review author

Mike Szczys

Author of the Hackaday hands-on source used for ESP32-WROVER, WiFi/Bluetooth, mesh/botnet, USB serial, GreenPAK, and LED-driver corroboration.

Source

badge art contributor

Doc

The retrospective credits Doc from the Packet Hacking Village with the western-themed design help that shaped the DC26 badge art.

Source

badge team and project publisher

AND!XOR

Project identity behind the DC26 Wild West of IoT badge, Hackaday.io project page, logs, and public badge-game documentation.

Source

badge team member

Andrew

Hackaday.io lists Andrew on the AND!XOR DC26 Badge project team.

Source

badge team member

bitstr3m

Hackaday.io lists bitstr3m on the AND!XOR DC26 Badge project team.

Source

badge team member and ARG/LULZCODE log author

Hyr0n

Hackaday.io lists Hyr0n on the project team and attributes the ARG and LULZCODE logs to Hyr0n.

Source

project owner and retrospective author

Zapp

Hackaday.io lists Zapp on the project team and attributes the DC26 retrospective to Zapp.

Source

Why It Mattered

It continued AND!XOR's DC24/DC25 unofficial badge lineage into the DEF CON 26 year, moving from the DC25 nRF52/BLE platform to ESP32-WROVER so the team could support more RAM, a faster display path, LULZCODE, a richer serial adventure, and a more elaborate public badge-game surface.

Hardware

The project page lists an ESP32-WROVER module, ISSI IS31FL3736 LED driver, CP2102N USB-to-UART bridge, switch hardware, DEF CON 26 Las Vegas context, and hackable dev-board framing. The retrospective describes a 220x176 color LCD, 40 MHz SPI and SD-card paths, ESP32-WROVER external RAM for LULZCODE and double-buffered display behavior, 31 RGB LEDs plus screen LEDs driven by the IS31FL3736, CP2102N micro-USB serial access, two-AA power, Skyworks AAT1217 boost regulation, and SAO/add-on work.

Software & Apps

Public logs document the B.E.N.D.E.R. text-adventure challenge over a USB serial console, ESP-IDF console use, LULZCODE as a LOLCODE-derived microcontroller scripting layer, WiFi/Bluetooth and badge-to-badge network goals, badge actions that affect files, LEDs, screen animations, packets, and hardware interfaces, plus hardware, reversing, cryptography, and wireless challenge areas.

Lore

The retrospective says the team wanted stronger manufacturing, a more ambitious design, add-ons, learning value, and a badge that made people ask what they were seeing. The resulting Wild West of IoT badge wrapped Bender-themed art and a social hacking challenge around serial-console play, with the team later noting that participants solved large parts of the game collectively but not enough individuals teamed up to finish it during the event.

Lifecycle

Add-ons & Upgrades

badge game source-backed

B.E.N.D.E.R. console challenge

The ARG and retrospective logs describe the Badge Enabled Non Directive Enigma Routine as a serial text-adventure challenge spanning hardware hacking, reverse engineering, cryptography, wireless capture, badge actions, and social collaboration.