DEF CON 32: Discover the New CovertSwarm Badge

Badge Story 

The badge life community at DEF CON is an incredible opportunity for hackers to showcase their technical skills and artistic flair. We’re excited to share that this will be the second year that CovertSwarm have designed a DEF CON badge for the #badgelife community. 

 Last year’s badge was a Hardware Hacking CTF, but this year we wanted to do something less complicated with a device that is accessible to more people. 

 The DEF CON  32 badge is built upon the idea that the conference was moved from its historical location, the Caesars forum to the Las Vegas Convention Centre, and attendees will likely have to walk more than the previous editions to reach the different areas of DEF CON  32.  

The badge is a role-playing game (RPG) that uses an accelerometer to detect the player’s movement throughout their time at the conference. 

The steps are then translated into experience points (XP) so the more you move, the more you level up your character, and on your adventure to reach the “Covert Caverns” you will randomly obtain loot.

These items could contain powerful equipment to aid you in facing the challenges that the game presents. 

Planning 

The production process for the prototype badge took more than 6 months. 

The team had several meetings and discussions over that period about various topics e.g. 

• How to design the badge 
• What hardware will be used in the badge 
• How will the badge be powered? (Li-Po cell, Triple A Batteries) 
• What functions will the badge have and how to technically implement them 
• Will there be puzzles built in? and how do we implement them? 
• Will there be any easter eggs? 

We came up with this version of the Walking Adventurers badge. Here are some pictures of the prototype build:  

Prototype Badge  

Initial Circuit 

From these schematics we were able to create some functional prototypes. Using THT (Through Hole Technology) components and perf boards to test the functionality of the code.  

Images are below: 

 

Using these prototypes, we were able to test aspects of the firmware and build a nicer looking template for the final badge which looks like this: 

Game Logic 

Characters 

 Within the game there are four classes to play, each with their own individual stats.

Paladin Attack: 8/100  Defense: 17/100  Luck: 10/100	Mage  Attack: 16/100 Defense: 9/100  Luck: 10/100	Rogue  Attack: 14/100  Defense: 8/100   Luck: 12/100	Bard  Attack: 9/100   Defense: 9/100   Luck: 17/100

Players will need to level up their character by moving (or cheating by shaking the device) to earn XP which will level up the player. As you travel, you will also have the chance to obtain powerful items and equipment. 

Players will complete the game by facing the multiple dungeons until they beat the Covert Caverns. 

Dungeons 

The Dungeons will have an entry requirement which is based on the user’s stats, level and health. 

For example, the “Vegas Sewers” Dungeon has the following requirements: 

• You need to have reached level 5 
• To enter the player must have 100% Health (Health is regenerated by walking) 

There will also be a variable number of rewards that will range in rarity for each dungeon. 

To complete the dungeon all the players must achieve the required number of steps which will increase with the difficulty of the dungeon. 

You can escape the dungeon at any time but doing so will lose you 50% of your health and all the XP gained in the dungeon. 

 

Loot 

An interesting detail about the looting system is that all the images for the items that a player will receive are unique as they are entirely generated using random factors, starting from a common base sprite.  

They will also be divided into rarity categories these are Common, Uncommon and Rare.  

Final Design 

This is what the final badge looks like:   

Front 

 Back 

 Further Updates 

The badge has been designed to grant both a long playability and interaction with other players.  

This version of the badge uses a Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) and does not include any wireless functionality, so the communication between the players must be done using the TRS or TRRS stereo cable. It might be a nice feature for a future update/addon to use a Pico W that has wireless communication Built-in and work out a protocol for that.  

After DEF CON, the files to create your badge or to make your own changes to the firmware will be published as open source. 

What This Badge Means

Louis Blackburn, operations director at CovertSwarm, said “We’re really proud of the team’s effort towards our badges for DEF CON this year. DEF CON badges are becoming so impressive that we wanted to make sure the CovertSwarm badge stood out even more than our 2023 one.  

Ale, John and Paul really stepped up to the challenge and have created a badge that anyone can pick up and interact with. It also makes sure we don’t sit still – the badge had a pedometer that makes sure we keep our step count up so we can level up! Between their day jobs of performing cutting-edge red team testing, they crafted both the hardware badge and software from scratch and overcame all the issues that badge production brings.  

We’re all really looking forward to getting hold of them for DEF CON and showing them off! They even had time to design and produce a secondary badge that we’ll be giving out to anyone that tracks us down at DEF CON too!” 

Anders Reeves, CEO added, “For our Swarm, DEF CON is one of the most exciting, and important cyber events that we attend and support every year. Knowing how revered and iconic the DEF CON badge has become, we wanted to pay homage to this ethical hacker community by creating our very own limited-edition badge; this time with a firm nod to DEF CON’s new location in Las Vegas for 2024.  

Built from the ground up by our global red team of ethical hackers and encouraging all who wear the badge to ‘put our steps in each day of the event’… this year’s CovertSwarm DEF CON badge is going to be the talk of the town. Kudos to our team for pulling off such a complex and collaborative achievement!” 

We want to say a huge thank you and well done to Alessandro G, John W, Paul W, and Martin E for leading and supporting this project. The team has worked incredibly hard from ideation to achieving this milestone for the company while proving to the #badgelife community our capabilities.