12 Facts About DEF CON

DEF CON is one of the world's largest and most notable hacker conventions, held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked".

DEF CON was founded in 1993, by then 18-year-old Jeff Moss as a farewell party for his friend, a fellow hacker and member of "Platinum Net", a FidoNet protocol based hacking network from Canada.

Term DEF CON comes from the movie WarGames, referencing the US Armed Forces defense readiness condition.

However, to a lesser extent, CON stands for convention and DEF is taken from the letters on the number 3 on a telephone keypad, a reference to phreakers.

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The second annual DEF CON China was canceled due to concerns related to COVID-19.

Notable part of DEF CON is the conference badge, which identifies attendees and ensures attendees can access conference events and activities.

The DEF CON badge has historically been notable because of its changing nature, sometimes being an electronic badge, with LEDs, or sometimes being a non-electronic badge such as a vinyl record.

DEF CON has its own cultural underground which results in individuals wanting to create their own meetups or "cons" within DEF CON.

DEF CON Groups are worldwide, local chapters of hackers, thinkers, makers and others.

DEF CON Groups were started as a splinter off of the 2600 meetup groups because of concerns over politicization.

DEF CON Groups are usually identified by the area code of the area where they are located in the US, and by other numbers when outside of the US.