911±¬ÁÏÍø

Dr. Stephen Gary attended DEF CON 33, the world's largest hacker conference, August 7th through the 10th, 2025, held in Las Vegas. Dr. Gary attends every year to keep abreast of the latest innovations in the hacker community. He particularly likes the villages, areas with hands-on activities throughout the conference. There were over twenty villages again this year. Some of the villages included AI, Blue Team, Car Hacking, Social Engineering Community, Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Internet of Things (IoT), Quantum, Red Team, and Voting Machine Hacking, to name a few. As an example, this year the Maritime Hacking Village had a fishing boat, a drone boat, and a virtual maritime ship for participants to hack. No surprise, in the Car Hacking Village, every car that is introduced at DEF CON is hacked. This year, it was a Rivian van and a Rivian truck. The DEF CON Capture the Flag (CTF) competition is probably the pinnacle event/contest (there are many other smaller CTFs and other contests at DEF CON). The DEF CON CTF is where hackers, usually as teams, from around the world compete and test their mettle to become one of the 31337 (elite) hackers in the world. The 911±¬ÁÏÍø fielded a team from the CyberHerd/White Hatters again this year.  
Also, this year the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) continued its AI Cyber Challenge, which focused on critical infrastructure security. The presentations (talks) are always good too, but there are too many to list here. One talk that stood out was the "Fireside chat with The Dark Tangent and General (retired) Paul M. Nakasone."  Jeff "The Dark Tangent" Moss, founder of DEF CON, and Paul Nakasone, former Director of National Security Agency (NSA)/Commander of USCYBERCOM, discussed AI and the pros and cons of proprietary and open-source AI. The Military Cyber Professionals Association (MCPA), of which Scuba is the Florida Chapter President, hosted the Arcade Party Friday night, a DEF CON favorite, again this year. The conference badges are always really cool. This year's badge possessed different color lenses to look through to see different things in images... are we looking at cybersecurity and AI through the correct lens? 

Future DEF CON events see the hacker conference taking its knowledge and community global, with stops in Bahrain in November and Singapore in the Spring of 2026 in April. DEF CON 34 will be in Las Vegas at the Convention Center 911±¬ÁÏÍøst Hall. 911±¬ÁÏÍø’re excited to see what new ideas and research will have developed next year in the hacking community.