DEFCON 32: My review as a first time attendee.

 Since the first time I heard about DEFCON (2018, probably before) I have wanted to attend. Due to time and mainly money, I haven't been able to up until now. Thankfully, my job (thank you very much!) paid for most everything an I was able to go this year. I am going to talk about my experience there and some tips for next year if you decide to (hopefully) go!

Let's start with the location. I hadn't been to the previous DEFCONs so I didn't know what it was like but this year it was held in the west wing part of the Las Vegas Convention Center. This location is right by multiple hotels (mine was about 10-15 min walk which wasn't too bad), and close to the strip. This center is huge and we were *just* in the west wing part of it. What I enjoyed most about this honestly was the central location. I can imagine walking across multiple hotels would get a bit tiresome. Everything was relatively close and about a 5 minute walk, or 30 second escalator ride. There were... A LOT of people, and it did get a bit claustrophobic at times but still quite big and generally enough room. The villages were spread out from each other and so were other things like ctfs, events, parties, etc. All in all, other than the prices (which I will talk about next) I thought it wasn't too bad. You are always going to have an issue stuffing over 30,000 people anywhere so it not being perfect for everyone makes sense no matter where you are. 

Next, the prices. Obviously, Las Vegas is expensive. Last time I went was in 2014 with my family when I was 18 so I don't remember what the prices were like, but man.... they were expensive. The convention center in my opinion was outrageous. 10 dollar beers, 10 dollar pizza slices, 22 dollar burger and fries, etc. Honestly I thought the worst part about this was that whenever I was too tired to walk or didn't want to get an uber I succumbed to buying at the food court. Extremely expensive, and no offense but not worth the price. Obviously, it's a big city so I guess one could say that I should have expected it but it was still a shock. I also wasn't aware until right before I left that my hotel charged for breakfast. The hotel store was also very expensive. ~24-28 dollars for a 6 pack of beer. (Like michelob, not specialty or anything). 

On to the food. The food in the food court was meh but the best place I went was tacos el gordo which was AMAZING (highly recommend) and was cheap compared to other restaurants. I went there 3 or 4 times! I also went to a thai place that was not my favorite, and the peppermill. The perppermill was quite good and the usual price of about what you would expect. ~35 dollars.  I didn't really eat much else other than some snacks and I wish I had explored more of the food scene. Well, there's always next year. :) 

The people. Ok, so I saw a lot of people discuss the fact that they had issues connecting with other people and felt very alone. I am very sorry for this, and this really stinks. I don't know what might have caused, but this was the opposite of my experience. I knew at least a couple from my state (Arkansas) coming so I would say that probably helped. And, I might be awkward but I am fairly extroverted so that helped in my out reach too. Even with random strangers though, I connected fine. I met so many amazing people and also met some of the people I looked up to and follow on twitter! This was the perfect place because it was people who genuinely loved computers like I do. Outside of this, most people don't give 2 quacks about computers. But a bunch of nerds passionate about hacking computers and other things was perfect! I am very thankful and lucky that I was able to connect. I admit that at first it was very overwhelming and I definitely had a panic attack the first day. But after I sat down, took a deep breath, and cleared my mind all was well! 

The classes/ctfs/talks: honestly... there really is not enough time to visit everything. I didn't even make it to the bio hacking village, or other ones! But that I think is the cool thing about it. Partly con partly pro. There was so much to do I of course wanted to do it all, but I couldn't. There was the dilemma of *what* do I do??? I walked around a lot and really found what interests me. My top three favorite villages were the embedded village, the ICS/SCADA village, and the IoT village. I saw an awesome talk given by a friend of mine at the IoT village, checked out a talk my friend Shyft gave at blacks in cyber, picked some locks, hacked a camera, and all in all enjoyed my time! The parties were awesome and the music was great. I personally really do enjoy the venue and hope it's in the same one next year! 

Now, there was quite a bit of drama with not only the hotels but the badge as well. I am not really going to go into this because I just don't know that much. You can look it up on reddit, twitter, etc. if you are interested. In my opinion, with 30,000+ people who are interested in hacking there is bound to be drama. You have all types of characters, some good, some bad. That's what makes it fun. :) 

All in all, I enjoyed myself very much. I love hacking and saw so many brilliant creations, hacks, ideas, people, etc. Here are a few tips for next year: 

1. The 3, 2, 1 rule. This is something you will hear about from anyone as a first rule. 3 hours of sleep, 2 meals, 1 shower. Now this should be the *minimum* not the exception! ;) At least strive for it! lol. 

2. Want to do CTF's the entire weekend? Do CTFs, but try and explore too. I did not do a CTF at all, when I know I could have spent all weekend doing one. My suggestion is if you don't do this then go without much of a schedule. You never know what will pique your interest. 

3. Wear good shoes, drink *plenty* of water, and sunscreen! It's hot, you walk a lot, and you will burn at some point. 

4. Bring money for badges (if you want). There were A LOT of cool badges, and I bought 2 but wanted all of them of course lol. Some of them were 20-40 dollars, some were 150+. The badges some people made were truly impressive, including the DEFCON badge! 

5. Book as early as possible and as close to the LVCC as possible. The fontaine bleau is new and RIGHT by the event. My recommendation is to book NOW for next year, as next year's event will be at the LVCC (I am pretty sure). 

6. Have fun. :) There are a lot of cool people and if you have any trouble the goons are there to help. If you need someone to talk to, to chill with, the goons can help and others can too. In fact, if you go there next year I'd love to bring you along my shenanigans and get to know you! I don't want anyone to feel left or forgotten. So many people there have gone through many things and are willing to help you have a good time! 

I hope to see you next year. I am going to see if I can do the hacker summer camp, but we will see. Thank you for reading this and if you have any corrections or comments, comment down below. Until next time, happy hacking! 

-BlackCatt

Twitter: https://x.com/Blackkatt99

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-luke-harvey-494b7a21a/