DefCon 2018: The Best Until the Rest

As the sun sets on Las Vegas, so ends the final day of DefCon 26. This year’s rendition of the hacking convention was just as full of content as its predecessors, with more speakers, workshops, vendors and villages than ever before. The coveted “Black Badges,” prizes given to winners of the best hacking competitions have found their homes in the hands of the best hacking teams from around the world.

Despite not being a Black Badge competition, the iconic Car Hacking Village too saw its best year yet. The Capture the Flag challenges this year featured disembodied head units, decapitated dashboards, riveting reverse-engineering challenges an escape from a Ford Escape and more. The challenges construed by experts in automotive cybersecurity such as GRIMM, Intrepid Control Systems, and Rapid7 gave the audience of newcomers and long-time enthusiasts plenty of material to explore in every aspect of automotive security engineering. The fierce competition was only outmatched by the enthusiasm shown by the teams as they pitted themselves against one another to compete for the first prize – a full size Polaris ATV.

All in all, Trillium is proud to have participated once again in this year’s Car Hacking Village, bringing our own CTF to the table for the best in the industry to test their skills against. As was the case last year, however, the Pass GO challenge remains uncracked. We look forward to the CHV community’s continued interest in our products and services through our up and coming automotive cyber-security sandbox environment to be released in October. Thanks again for a great event, DefCon, and we’ll see you again next year!