So I guess you're all here to see how to make your own DEF CON black beds right? So yeah you
gotta do it yourself otherwise it's not going to happen. Uh I'm going to blow by the agenda
because we have 70 slides in one hour. Uh I'm going to introduce ours. Um we're DC503 from
Portland, Oregon. That's Jesse. Jesse raise your hand. He's the human computer. Kenny. He
really is good at picking place. Mike. Senior Troubleshooter. Troublemaker. Troublemaker.
Sorry. Makers Mark is really good. And you should introduce everyone else. Alright this is
Mickey. Mickey is Israeli but he's actually the the least Israeli person I know. And uh this is
Joe. Joe used to work for Intel but he's reformed now.
And then there's Dean. Raise your hand Dean. Dean is the bricker of all things. Don't let him
touch your stuff. I'll be I'll be doing most of the talking. Um Mike's his first time
speaking at DEF CON. So let's have him a good welcome here. Um so thank you. Thank you.
Uh anyone here is their first DEF CON? Raise your hand. Holy shit. Okay. So uh I'm going to
give you a shot of Jack Daniels. Okay. Never mind. Uh there's a tradition in DEF CON for years
that if it's your first time speaking at DEF CON the goons come by they give you a shot of Jack
Daniels and you take a shot. But unfortunately this year you cannot do that. The goons uh have
been barred from it. We have our own. So Mike. Your first DEF CON talk.
For the record this booze has been bought in this hotel. Okay oh. You have animated
gifs and stuff. So why why make a black badge anyway right? Like what's the point? You spend a
lot of money uh countless hours for what? Uh for the lols right? We did it. We we want to do it.
I guess all y'all stand stood in lines. Right? We don't want to stand in lines. No one likes
lines. Plus Lost said it was impossible. And we kind of like to prove the opposite of people.
And well we wanted to do it anyway. It was a nice challenge. So this talk is going to be divided
into three parts because we did three badges. We did uh DEF CON 22 and then we did a DEF CON 14.
And then the 23 was the the last one. And it's going to be weird cause 22, 14, 23. Bear with us.
Um how this all started is an interesting story. We just uh ended up DEF CON ended after DEF CON
22. We come home. We open um whatever open source schematics released from um from Lost.
And it's amazing. It's the human badge. And we saw the Uber badge and they're all the same.
Almost identical. And we're like holy shit. We can do this. We can make a copy. What do we need?
So we downloaded all the files. We played around with it. And we kind of know Eagle. If you
don't know what Eagle is you're lucky. And plus we know Lost. We love him. He's a great guy. And
we wanted to surprise him with one of you know our um uh donation to his work. So we went to the
secret access page. And we found out that um this is the uh the Google account. And we're
idea. That's the page in Parallax form where it's uh located at. So yeah so I've been using Eagle
for like 15 years um which is the only reason I don't use KiCad is because there's like
learning curve and so uh Lost or whoever designed the badge used DipTrace which is a software
program that makes stuff and uh like hey you know it has an export to Eagle function I know
Eagle that's a whole lot easier than using like software I don't know. Has anybody ever
designed a PCB before? If you can imagine a paint program that doesn't do what you tell it to
do that'd be fucking frustrating wouldn't it be? That's what EDA tool that's what uh board
design tools are like. Um so you know I'm like okay I know Eagle we can export to Eagle we'll
go down that path we tried that and yeah it was just a mess. So we went back and then Mickey had
tried to to open up uh this program DipTrace which is uh Windows software. I think we tried it
on on OSX, Windows and Linux. Yeah and all I could get it to do was run it on Linux which is
basically running under Wine so I ran the Windows version on Linux and it worked. So whatever. Um
so we had that software and basically we we took it's the same schematic the same layout and
everything what we had to add to it was all the the bits and pieces the uh I won't I won't spill on
you guys you're farther away. Um I've already spilled once today. Uh DipTrace yeah DipTrace is
an interesting set of software. So basically we we we changed the outline of the badge the
circuit was the same we had to add a bunch of artwork to it. I think the next slide. The next
slide yeah. It's gonna have something on it. What you see yeah what you see here that is um days
to weeks of googling. Yeah. So you we have that's by the way that's a public picture of the
black badge. So everything we went on was um a public pic picture of the black badge. For the
22 we we have no ac we had no access to a real one. So it's really cool as you look at these
badges and you see all those pins on either side those are .1 inch headers. So if you're
trying to scale something you can use those points as like really good indicators of what size
is. So basically taking that we could we could take this photograph it was at an angle we could
we could orient it properly we could actually get like millimeter precision to where every
single silk screen and every single like metal area on that board was. And Mickey did all the
artwork stuff and he sits there in MS Paint like pushing buttons. So. Paint dot net. Paint dot
net whatever. Open source. Windows something. It's it's it's really cool tool to use. Uh we were
sitting in the in the in the 503 hacking space the control H1 in Portland and and Joe has this
technique of of measuring on screen he takes a piece of paper and he turns it in and it's like oh
he puts it on the monitor and he measures it and then he does this and then that's the spot
where it needs to go. I'm not the only one, I swear. He swears it's legit, I don't know.
Anyway, so we have this picture, it's public. Where the hell do I get that Uber font? Open
Google, free fonts, open 1001 free fonts, show me 100 results at a time and I type in I
want to see how you show Uber in that font. I go page by page until I find something similar
and I found the exact font for that. Actually I wrote an AI image recognition program that
found the font and searched all of them automatically, I just didn't want to tell you. I hate
you Joe. You know that's a joke. I haven't even gotten into Korean yet. The next up is the
skull. So I've spent like two months looking for that skull. I took a picture of it with my
phone, with my camera, high resolution camera and I took a picture of it with my phone and I
did as best as I can, cropped it out, did reverse image search, nothing helped. And then I
thought, hmm, it's a PCB, maybe it's inversed. So I inverted the colors and I found the image
and that's the skull and bones on the left. I actually had to literally Google skull and
bones image search and page by page until I found that alien skull and continued from there.
The Korean is interesting. I kind of hate lost for that. I don't know what to do with that.
Because in Korean when you type a letter it's weird because you type another letter and it
changes the word. I don't know, it's like, that little tiny man dancing in the top there, the top
right, the one legged man, the one legged devil, that's like four characters together and if
you type the wrong one it has, he has two legs and then he has one arm. And it took me hours to
figure out the right combination for that. I thought those were a bunch of op- like transistors or
something. I couldn't figure them out. For the 23 it was easier. I just asked a friend to ask his
Korean friend to tell us what it says. I should have done that to begin with. And we ended up
with this. So this is the Gerber for the DEF CON 22 black badge. So if you, I made a board before,
you know, you have the schematic. The schematic is all the circuits and where the, what, what
connects to what. The layout is where you go and place the components relation to each other. The
layout is where you go and, you know, place the routes where everything goes. But still, like,
that's not the file format that the board design, uh, board manufacturer is going to want. They
want a Gerber which is kind of like a CAD organizing format. It's all text. But figuring out
how to extract Gerbers from DipTrace is pretty interesting because they have, like, 101
options. Basically what, I can't remember, is it, this is the one that they want you to, like,
use their service to buy order boards? Yeah, you want to, you want to, Gerbers? Pay us money.
Yeah, you want Gerbers? Pay us money. But, you know, you just check the right boxes. Um, you
can actually get Gerbers out of them.
And you have to check the right boxes over and over again and do it 100 times. And, uh, or
write a script to do it. You know, if you don't like doing stuff manually. And after we have the
schematic, we have, well, the layout. We have the silk screens that go on the badge. We need to
figure out the parts. So comes the part of the bomb where we, uh, laid it on Dean. We have a
picture of, of the, the speaker badge we had from the, from 22 because we give a talk at 22. And
we put numbers.
On each component, on a high res picture. Send it to Dean and then said, Dean, figure this shit
out. So, let's see, this microphone works? Okay, we're good. Uh, so I'm not good with Korean or
Eagle. So this is what I got stuck with doing. Um, they put a bunch of numbers on the boards.
And we had the, um, the bill of materials, which they call bombs. Which is scary. Um, that,
like, so we had the bomb from the Parallax website. And we didn't, like, necessarily know,
like, where all the components went. And so I went through and where all the orange dots are, uh, I
verified with a multimeter that this is the actual component that we think it is. Because there's a
bunch of, like, different resistors of different resistances, uh, that are just kind of, uh, what?
Oh, okay. Is this better? Yay. Move forward. Okay. I pulled this thing as far as, okay. We're good.
I was talking to them, Dean. Swallow, swallow the mic. Yeah. Okay, we're good. Pull the
mic. Um, god damn it. Um, yeah. So there's all these orange dots everywhere. And so I spent a
long time, like, going through with the multimeter and making sure that each component was the
component that I thought it was from the list of components that exist. Uh, just so that we knew
that, you know, the right things were in the right places. And there were some differences. Like,
um, the colors of some of the black badge LEDs are different than the colors of, uh, the human, uh,
PCBs that we had. And, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so,
um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um. There's strange differences, like, even,
like, what kind of resistors that you need in those situations and whatever. Yeah. So, it was
fun and exciting and I did stuff with electricity and probably broke some stuff. I'm sorry. I
promised Case I'd call him up for a shot on stage. Yay. Take it, take it, take it. Sorry
for that interruption. Way to go, Case. Yeah, I'm done. Okay. You're done.
So uh after we did all that stuff we had all the parts uh it came time to order the boards
and there's a lot of variables you can get when you order boards and there's a lot of
places you can order them from and then some of them are expensive and some of them are
cheap. If you actually want something specific it's expensive it's really expensive but if
you're kind of like uh you have low standards like me it's really easy you just find the
cheapest place that ships your boards from China um and so there's this place I've used
regularly and um you know they always ship pretty quickly when I get bulk orders and they
have just the right finish so the right color of black and the right shininess of the black so
we decided to go with them and we ordered uh the first run of boards and what you see there is
the first run and we looked at it and there's a couple things that you might notice um if
you're Mickey and you're really really um uh very uh attention attentive to detail or
something like that um so you see there's like the the headers of pins on each side the left
and right on the front of the badge there's a little white outline around them and you'll
notice it's a tiny bit too low right and you look at the Korean text on the very bottom and
you'll notice it touches all the way to the bottom of the badge which wasn't the case in the
original badge. The other thing is the spacing of the numbers on the back was a little bit off
um is anybody see any other differences that they might notice? Does anybody notice the dick
butt underneath the chip? Yeah so if you ever if you're ever not really sure whether it's
legit or not just take off the CPU and if there's a dick butt there it's real and if
there's not then it's fake okay. And actually just something I wanted to say um I I know
I don't say this in talks but cyber, cyber, cyber, cyber. Take a shot. Take a shot. Threat.
Threat, threat, threat, threat. Okay. Thank you. Oh the lot number just
Joe. What more? You forgot the lot number. Lot oh yeah there's a lot number. Where is it? On
top or left? Top left. Top or the B on Uber? There's a lot number number. So you know cheap
place they just they don't speak much English but they send me boards quickly so I usually
don't worry. Uh is it on the next one next slide? Yeah. So we got a second run we fixed all
those things but the hard part is like does that mean we need to move our silkscreen up a
little bit or is it just the tolerance of the ones we made? I think we moved it up half the
difference. And it's also um the the the thickness of the boards there is a little bit of a
difference. I think they use remember the first the first batch we got was thinner. It was
really thin. Oh yeah. So we got uh yeah we used uh uh non-standard thickness I believe. Yeah
and they were like sorry that's what we got. I don't remember. But then we chose a thicker one
and it was better. Um but hey whatever. Yeah. Whatever floats your boat. Uh so what we did
we also I also asked them and this was tough with the the language barrier uh but they they
managed to to put the lot code on the back. So when they do these boards we're not ordering uh
20,000 boards like Lost does. We're ordering uh a few uh number to not be disclosed. And uh
so you know special requests don't really come well. They put these on a panel with a whole
bunch of other people that are making their own fake black badges. And we we don't want that
panel. So we put a little box on the back. You see on the left side there's a little uh white
box. Inside that we like I asked them like eight times to put the lot code in there and they
said oh yes oh yes. And you know then I asked them again and they said sure. And then they
finally did it which was great. So whatever. Um so that actually gets concealed by the battery.
So the other thing if you ever want to like find out if it's real or not look underneath the
battery and look for that lot code. And yeah if it's real or not look for that lock code. And yeah
it's under there. Then it's real. So now we have we have the boards. We have the silkscreen
everything is ready. Now the next stage is manufacturing. So these are
0402's right. 0603. 0603's. Not that terrible. 0603 means uh 0.6 of them no.
2 or 0.f inches by 0.1 inches. Sorry I don't do freedom units. These are actually kind
of big uh if you do a whole lot of surface mount work then this is this is a very convenient
size. Into the mic even more. Hello. Thank you Kenny. How's this working for you? Is this
good? Aww yeah. Deeper? Okay. No okay. I don't know if my voice goes much deeper. So as I was
saying these are the big ones these these resistors here 0603s they're actually a very
convenient size if you're making a small project by hand work with 0603s they're pretty
great. Uh these are very carefully organized um that is not my work I I'm usually very fast
and just like throw the things on the boards um but it's kind of a hassle to pull all the
parts out of the bags and put them on the board so having a helper is fantastic and I was
lucky enough to have Jesse as my helper who is amazing meticulous and a machine and he
aligned all of these resistors for me so that I could more rapidly place them on the board
so it was fantastic. So Jesse was the pick and Kenny was the place?
Uh so here we have an uber badge actually there are uh five of them just barely visible inside
the toaster oven uh this is actually a reflow oven that I had access to at a lab and uh the
process here is fairly simple the idea is um we use some lasers we use some caustic chemicals
uh not nearly as caustic as uh yellow cake but hey we have our own fun uh so first pass is to uh
what's called a um a a stencil uh or a um solder paste mask and build a stencil and the stencil
is we were just using parchment paper uh laser cut with a pretty standard laser cutter that you'll
find at a lot of hacker spaces and uh lay that over each badge and just sort of squeegee on
some solder paste and then you have the the solder paste in all the right places and you just
lay the parts on top of it pretty easy and straight forward. You know if you need to you
can also use one of those laminated paper human badges? Yeah. And then you have the the solder
paste you know as a stencil if you wanna use for it. Yeah what else you gonna do with that
thing? Well get into some talks I guess. Uh so you know it's just kind of a time consuming
process you put the solder paste on you put a whole bunch of parts on and then throw it in the
oven and pops out and it's ready to go. Solder on a few more components like the uh battery
holder because you can't do that in the oven and uh power it on and see what's broken. Usually
when you take it out of the oven there are gonna be some problems that you'll have to fix a few
solder bridges on the you know the finer pin uh uh uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh
um spacing parts and just go back through with some solder wick and a little bit of flux and
it's not too bad. So this is something that I do for a set of a side gig uh I just build tiny
stuff. I also unbuild tiny stuff so if you have a sniper rifle and you wanna get the flash off
of it let me know. Uh that's one of the things I do. Um but don't be afraid of this. Surface
mount soldering for a lot of people seems really like challenging like a lot to learn and and oh
man my hands aren't steady enough. I hear so often oh gosh I'm terrible at soldering from
people at the hacker spaces but it's really not too bad if you take some time to figure out the
techniques. There are a few things that will help a lot. Mostly figuring out how to stabilize
your hands. If you're just holding your arm out it's not gonna be very stable. If you rest your
wrists on the table it'll be a lot more stable. Simple tricks like that go a long way. Try it
out. Start with a simple project like a good fit. It only has a few parts on it. It's pretty easy.
Alright. And uh once we had the badge by the way. This is it. It's uh working. This is a fake
one. It works. It blinks. Um we did flash it with the the human badge firmware because we
didn't have the uber badge firmware or any other firmware. But uh it's passable right? Okay.
So we get the badges. We get the DEF CON and we're like um what do we do with this? Um we're
like what do we do? But did it work? And Mike? Hmm? But did it work? It worked. Yeah.
We we got through uh black badge registration. Registration. Sorry. Anyway. So um a few days
go by inside uh into DEF CON you know there's the EFF uh badge contest and Mike is like uh
texting me in the Saturday noon. You know it's like 4 a.m. for a DEF CON attendant and like
there's a badge contest happening right now. Get your ass over here. Get your ass over here. Get
your ass over here. I run over there and and we we won it. We won the uh the badge hacking
contest for for the black badge. Um and here's a couple of cool shots. This is a real one next to
a fake one. So anyone want to guess which one is the real one? Yell it. Left is the real one? If
you think the left one is the real one raise your hand.
Yep. Yep. The right one is the real one. We have a small short video of them working side by
side. We had a participant in the in that contest that had a DEF CON 22 black badge. He ran
to his room, brought it back and we uh come on play. And we had him side by side and we had a
what you will see is the the uber badge communicating with supposedly a human badge
from where? Through IR. It works. That is the closest we get to a demo at this talk. Now
why did we do the Defcon 14 badge to begin with is an interesting story. You might have
noticed Mike hasn't said anything. Well because we were all doing the 22 and Mike was like I
want in I want in and we were like um you know what everyone is doing something and everyone
is covering practically everything so um we we need you to do something to do like to
contribute. Let's do another badge. We're done with everything on time and we need a last
minute project so maybe you can help us out with that. Oh yeah. When does this ever happen?
This is the whole story by itself which is going to be hilarious. So me and Mike worked on
the 14. By the way this is the only picture I found online from Defcon 14. How many hours did
you look for that on Google? I am the Google image master. Master what? So why do the 14
anyway right? Because we we Joe Grand he's from Portland we love him. If you ever met Joe
Grand you know you know he's the sweetest person ever. And we wanted to surprise him and it
was when we showed this to him it was hilarious. I mean it was hilarious. I mean it was hilarious.
He he freaked out. He was like you did this in Eagle? And yeah that was really impressive.
So we thought this would be the easiest badge to make. Not quite. It's the easiest match to make
so Mike found the hardest way to make it. So the Defcon 14 black badge was the human badge in
black. So that seems pretty easy right? Eat it eat it. Eat the mic. Just spray paint right? Yeah
that seems pretty easy right? You just like you know make another one just like that but black
right? This is easy. Um you know maybe it wasn't exactly so easy. Um unlike the 22 they didn't
just publish you anything really. You had to find like a 14 badge. Fortunately we had someone
who had a 14 black badge. And we had a human badge. From Dean. From Dean. From Dean. From Dean.
Dean has a human badge. Jesse actually has. Jesse has one too. Jesse has two legit black
badges by the way. Two. Two. Two. Two. Two legit ones. I don't know about how many
unlegit ones but. Two legit ones. Did we mention he's smart? He's a yeah he's smart.
He's smart. Jesse's smart. Watch out for this guy. Yeah. So you know we we took some
measurements and everything is on the on the 22 like things are we have the .1 inch headers
and things lined up appropriately. And it seems like from photographs you can kind of figure out
what's going on. So you know it seems like this should be like easy to do but you know it was a
long time ago in a galaxy far far away and they didn't know about like maybe putting things on a
grid. So we uh we worked from photographs. And uh so in order to get to. In order to get to
the uh to the part where we had it like on a PCB uh uh in the EDA on Eagle. Um we basically took
uh photographs scaled them. Mickey um like some sort of obsessed monkey like traced them in MS
paint 95 or something. At like 4000 DPI. And um. You know what happens when you put like a
4,000 DPI bitmap into, into Eagle, the world's crappiest but free EDA software. It, it just
explodes. So, okay, that wasn't gonna work. And it doesn't really support any, any vector
formats. So, okay, this is, this is obvious what we need to do. We need to take from the
photographs, make these high resolution bitmaps, uh, trace those bitmaps into a vector
format, simplify that vector format into a series of polygons, and then write a script that
makes, uh, takes those polygons, does, um, does projection of them so that they are in the
right place. This sounds like a software solution to a hardware problem, Mike.
And then, like, import them into Eagle and hope it doesn't explode. And at least one time it
did not explode. And then just go back and do it over and over and over and over and over
and over and trace and trace and trace and trace. And we're like, okay, you know, this is
gonna be easy. Um, and then we, we discovered a quirk of Eagle. Well, it's, it's free but, but.
Um, it has this weird thing that says, like, you know, the free version can't do anything
over 80 millimeters by 100 millimeters. And, you know, that's like in some EULA about, you
know, how you sign your life away. And I didn't read any of that. And so I just proceeded and it
lets you make the board that's this big and it lets you place all the cutouts that's this big.
But, you know, it turns out that it won't let you place any components over 80 millimeters. And
the badge is bigger than 80 millimeters. And, um, this wouldn't have been too much of a problem
except for this was, like, probably, you know, three days before con or something .
And we're like, oh shit, oh shit, what are we gonna do? What're we gonna do? And it actually
we can't call the CAG company and buy a real license because they're asleep and they're in
Germany, what are we going to do? And we're like, oh wait a minute, you know, you only have
to have it within 80 millimeters to place the components. So, and all the components are
within 80 millimeters so we can, we can just do that. All we have to do is redo everything
that we did before in terms of projecting all the things and placing all the things. So
we, we got our Gerbers in, in line and we got that all worked out and now we just, all we have
to do is have it made and assemble it. This is no problem, right? And we're probably like, you
know, two days before con at this point. It's fine. It was, it was a, it was a really, really,
like the week before we were talking about, Mike, we need to find someone, uh, sorry, it was
a week before and we need to find someone to make these in black. And, and, and, and, and
you'd think it'd be easy to find someone who makes these PCBs in black. You need, you need two
things. I need, I need PCBs that are black. Now black is not green. And I need it like now. And I
called every board house that I could in the U.S. like, I need unspecified number of black
PCBs, two cutouts, you know, one ounce pour, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I need, I need a
black, you know, black solder mask. Can you do that? Every single one was like, yes, yes, we can
do that. We'll have that to you tomorrow. Yes, yes we can do that. Yes we can. And then I would get a
phone call, you know, and I'm like, okay, here's all my money. Because, uh, if you want boards
tomorrow, that's expensive. Okay, here, here, here's all my money. And then they would call me
back after they took my money. About two hours later and I'm hoping to get like, okay, you know,
you're going to give me a message that the board's been fad. And they're like, you know, what
about green? And, and, uh, the first guy, I was like, you know, that, that's, that's, that's not
okay. Give me my money back. By like the fifth guy, I'm like, motherfucker, dude. And, uh, the
last guy called back and said, well, what about green? And I, and I was about to go on a, on a,
on a really, um, long, swear-laden, laden, uh, tirade with him. And, uh, he said, you know,
we, we, we can do black, but you have to buy the whole panel. And, uh, I thought, well, okay.
That's kind of more than I'm maybe looking for, but, okay, we can do that. Um, and, and he said,
you know, this will, this will make it, you know, this will make it so there are no lot numbers
on it. Which is funny because we had talked for about half an hour earlier that day about having it
have no lot numbers.
But, you know, it turned out pretty okay. This is, uh, do, do we have a real one?
You have your real one. No, this is a fake one. This fake one? We don't. Yeah, this is real. Is it a
real fake? It's a real, it's a real fake. Oh, I have it backwards. And, uh, wait, wait. Jesse,
you have the real DEF CON 14 black badge and you're wearing the fake one. I'm only wearing the
fake one. Oh, okay, cool. Never mind. So, it looked pretty good. You know, it turned out, uh,
pretty well. You know, there's, there's the levels of, uh, success like full lagoon, you know,
full DT, you know, full Joe Gran. We got pretty good. And, um, you know, that's what the final
image processing output looked like. And, uh, when we finally had it, uh, you know, uh, you know,
fabricated, but you notice, like, in the story, I didn't tell you about, like, assembling it or
anything. That was just to get a board in hand. So, this is fine. You know, it's, it's just some
soldering. We can, we can do that really quick. Um, well, you know, we can do that really quick
in our hotel room. So, I brought my entire, like, solder workstation to Vegas. And, uh, the
night before con, we were, like, feverishly soldering this up in our hotel room. And, uh, we, uh,
you know, I think it worked out pretty okay. And, like Mickey said, we, we said, oh my God,
yeah, I saw, oh my God, they're having a, it works, it works kind of. Okay, uh, Mickey's
reminding me that it, it works in the sense that, uh, you can, um, you know, win the badge
pageant and you can impress Joe Gran and full DT and full goons. But, like, I don't know
exactly what went wrong at 3 a.m. in my hotel room, but it didn't actually function. And, uh, we, uh,
I thought I picked up. How many components, Mike, how many components? Hmm? How many
components? Aw, this is, this is embarrassing. Isn't that why you brought me up here, to
shame all of you? Well, you know, like, less than ten. How many on this one? Haha
Um, alright, here you are. So, so, funny story about the bomb for this badge. Uh, can you hand
me one? Uh. Does that have a... I'll throw it down. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We, uh, yeah, yeah.
This badge has one button in the back of it. One. And in our fake badge it's blue. You're
shitting me right? 10 minutes? They do that on purpose. 10 minutes? It's 1.30. Okay. Hurry
the fuck up. Anyway the button's blue. It was 10 years ago they stopped making it. If you
want to buy the white button the way it was supposed to be you have to pay like 20 bucks a
button and we're like no. Anyway DEFCON 23. We go radioactive on this stuff. Okay. Why
would we do the 23 because Lost said it was impossible and we were like we already did the
PCB. Let's do something that's not electronic. It'll be fun. Why not? It's nuclear. Um so
how do we do it? We we just we wanted the triangles you know Lost said if you don't if you
are unfamiliar with last year's black badge it is called
captured lightning in a uh plexiglass triangle right? That what Jesse's holding up. The
beautiful model is holding the uh it it's charged with millions of volts and then some guy I
think Brent? Brett comes and hammers it in a nail it discharges and it shows lightning
inside. There's only one guy in the U.S. that does this. In the world. In the world that does
this. He holds the patents and that particular shape and size is what we're looking for. We're
looking for the size of triangle is no longer manufactured. That's the picture from their
website and that is so the model was 14A and 14. This one was the other one they had was the
same size as the black badge but was an inch think thick. And you don't want a black badge. It's
an inch thick. You give it to someone who's that goon or DT or Lost. Lost is going to be like
what what is this shit? So we have to have the original black badge. We have to have the original
triangle. Anything. So I email the guy okay we have to do this. We have to, we're a bunch
of makers from Portland. We want to make triangles that light up with LEDs. Weir if anyone here
seeing Portlandia? We kind of emailed him like that. Uh we want to do a fancy...? We're
going to put birds on it. You're gonna put birds on it. En port beer? IPAs. Craft beer? Kraft beer.
we really had to have that specific one. We had to put in a special order. The minimum
order is uh oh good lost is on his way. Uh we had to put a special order in. So it was like
okay minimum order is 10. We're like we're not going to be too suspicious. Give us 12.
Because we know we're going to fuck up at least one. Um well we guessed as much. And um we're
like yeah okay when is it going to be ready and we put the order in at uh September and he was
going to go to the super particle accelerator in December. Okay we'll wait five months. Fine.
Um so and then an interesting story. During the email conversation we were talking about
like oh you know this specific model you're asking for was uh used by this guy at this DEFCON
conference and they were doing this nuclear crazy stuff. Like check out this link. And I'm
like oh wow that's amazing. So was that nuclear? Nucular. Nucular. Nucular. English not my
first language. Okay okay. Just checking. I I love America. Okay. So we're going I'm going.
How do we deal with radiation? So okay um I've never done this before. Lead pig. This is what
this is called. This thing is like this big and it weighs a ton. Okay. Go on eBay. I need a lead
radiation container. Got it. I need um uranium glass dipped marbles. I won the bid on that
one. Um and I'm like okay what do I what else do I need? I need a Geiger counter. Okay. Lost
has a Geiger counter that costs like a gazillion dollars. I'll show you a picture later. And I'm
like I'm poor. I'm going to go on eBay and I'm going to find the cheapest one I can find. So I'm
like okay. Uh it has to be Russian. And because it's Russians are good with radiation.
And it has to be cheap. So I found one for like 60 bucks. And I'm like oh my god this is steel
because this this specific model is like 250 minimum. Like the whole length of this is a Geiger
tube. And I go what's the catch? It has only Russian. The interface is only in Russian. Like
okay. I looked online. I was like probably the guy's an idiot. He can't change he can't change the
the language and the settings. I'll buy it. No. It's it's hard coded in Russian. Good thing
I know Russian. Kinda. Uh but it's really amazing when this thing glows red in Russian. Like
holy shit. Um so we got the uranium marble. I'm hurrying. I'm hurrying. Five minutes.
Serious? It's 140. Um anyway. We got the uranium marbles. We got the uranium marbles. We
got tritium. Right? Lost order tritium. He got it in co- ah he's lost. Hey. So we have this
deal. Every year we do the fake badge. We give a copy of it to DT. One to DT and one to lost.
And he checks the this one's for you brother. And there's for you to check the quality and
Oh he was already wearing a competitor's black badge. So these are both fakes so I'm
going to have a battle of the fakes and I'm going to see who does the best forgery. This
guy is awesome. I'm going to, I got like 5 minutes. Ok so um we got the treaty and I'm
like ok I am a foreign national in the US and I'm faking a nuclear black badge. Who do I
know who's a citizen? Dean you ordered the yellow cake uranium. Yeah. You know what you
should. I don't give a fuck. Yeah exactly. These guys do the NSA places. I'm like you're on a
list somewhere I don't care. Has anyone been on united nuclear dot com? Anyone know that
website? Raise a hand. Yeah. Has anyone bought anything from it? Yeah. They accept PayPal and
they ship really quickly and it's like giant lasers and all sorts of crazy crap. But yeah do
that's funny. I have to I have to ask Mickey did your tritium vials come in pa packaged in
fake coffee packages like mine did? I I I hoped for it but no. I had Jesse order 8 of them.
We need we need to compare sources then because mine came and it was labeled and they had
taken coffee and opened it up and sealed them inside so it looked like it was getting
Folgers. We we were like ok we're not going to order from a Colombian drug lord like Lost. We
are going to. Ok I'm like ok Ebay tritium vial. I think it's blue. Order. Please don't arrest
me. Please don't arrest me. I sent this picture to Lost. Anyway this is the Geiger counter. This
is one of the PR pictures you had for your badge. I didn't take that picture. And I
remember it 0.338 on the Geiger counter for the real Uber badge and I had this picture. This is
on the fake the fake badge and the the Russian Geiger counter.
Is that standard or metric? Yeah. Ok I gotta hurry up. Ok so uh the coin. The coin is the
biggest challenge here. We have to fake the coin. So um what do we do? We get high res
pictures. The front. The back. The front. The front again. What do we do? What do we do? We
get months. MS paint. MS paint. .exe. Again. And we get high res. So um 2 things that are
distinctly different in this one. The font in the back of the coin where I said fuck it. I I
I've spent months on 22 Uber fonts. I'm not going to do it again. And the dick butt in the
front. Did you actually translate to Korean? Do you know what that means? I don't know. I'm not
sure. Do you know what it says? It it it so it's wait for it we have a slide for that. Funny
story about Korean. So we got this thing. Anyone if you know what 9gag is raise your hand.
Awesome. So we went on 9gag. Anybody knows what this says in Korean? Everyone was like all
hail supreme leader. Uh and and one guy said the taffy salesman does whatever the fuck he
wants. So it's a Korean proverb. It says yet which means the guy who sells yet can do
whatever the fuck he wants. Yes exactly. And yet is taffy. It's Korean taffy. And um. But it's a
double entendre because you tell someone to go eat yet is like fuck off. Exactly. So we tried
that and I'm like okay some guy on the internet told me this means that. I'm like no. Anyone I know knows anyone who knows Korean.
And a co-worker of mine Topher has a friend who speaks Korean. I'm like Topher ask your friend.
But I'm not gonna do this thing again when I type into word documents in a Korean font and I'm
trying to guess which combinations of English letters cause that to look like a look at the top
right. The three and the two. Alright that. What is that? I don't know. I don't do Korean. And
and he sent me the the Korean text in Gmail. I'm like copy paste. I'm like you know screw it.
Um. So time. Yeah. We're almost done. So how did it end up? We we found out like a week ago Jesse
sends me an email. There's this guy on Reddit. Are you here by the way Robert? Come here come
here come here. This guy. Comes up on Reddit says I present to you my Uber badge. And
he he he made his own which is awesome. Well kudos because wow. I thought it was bigger. This is
the first time I'm seeing this. Yeah so I didn't know how big the badge was. Come on come on. I
didn't know how big the badge was supposed to be cause I only had a picture of some guy holding
it. So I assumed that guy's finger was as big as mine. That's how I set the uh CAD scale. Did
he have stubby fingers or long fingers? This is the third time people have done forgeries that are the wrong scale.
Based on pictures like that. But this is really good. The back of it is is is is carved as well. This is
really good. And then the way I did the uh Leichenberg figure or however it's pronounced. Uh I took
two quarter inch pieces of acrylic. Laser engraved it. Painted it. Uh put some clear epoxy on
it. And then I just smashed it together with enough force to about make the acrylic explode and
then I cleaned up the edges.
Awesome job.
The front and the back. And and and while we were doing the slides cause no one ever has, I
know we're out of time, no one has ever, no one ever has the slides ready. Uh as we were doing the
slides Mike comes to me and says holy shit did you see someone else fake the Declan badge? Like a
third party? Ok. And um. By the way people always ask me if I'm pissed about it and I think I have a
Mickey will tell you I always tell him it's great freaking keep doing it man. We were scared
shitless the first time we did this. We're like either we go out as as the ones who fake the
badges or we get banned for life. Nuclear badges come on man. It turned out well. Uh so
thank you Jager from the council of nine he uh we we corroborated the information we had with
a legit black badge uh but we the assumptions at first. I got one bomb to drop on you.
There's a hidden fiducial that nobody has found yet or copied precisely that only I know
about. There's one thing missing? Gotta do it again. Shit. We're not doing it again. So.
You're gonna do this year's Uber right? You've seen it. Did you check the did you check
ours? I have checked yours. Did you say it was impossible to do? Yeah but I have to say
that right? No. Okay we gotta. Security theater. We we went last night to a party
and uh we had um the winner of a social engineering black badge there last night and we had
the real one versus our fake. And it looked ours looked ours looked cleaner. I I'm sorry.
Time time time. You know what I go through every year. Yeah. Yeah. So that's it. We're
done. This is the last slide. This and I have to embarrass Mike. Hold on. No no no no.
We're gonna go down the line. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We will be taking questions. Uh. Just not here. Not here. No no. The goons are kicking us
out. Thank you.