First off, we at DEFCON 201 want to wish our attendees, future members, past and future partners and anyone who has come across our organization a Happy New Year, putting 2019 behind us and marching forward into 2020!
The year 2020 is going to be a huge year for us because plans that our Co-Founders have been developing for two years now will finally be executed this year. We still have a lot of moving parts to make all these things happen so your well wishes and support will be greatly appreciated.
In the mean time, here are some of our (screen) resolutions for 2020…
:..>Less Talk, More Action
We have an awesome line up of people waning to speak about their research and passions in 2020. However, with some exceptions we are going to change it a bit this year. We are going to be focusing on quality over quantity. This will make the talks more in depth, a greater focus on Open Workshops and a much need focus on people bringing in their own projects.
:..>How to NOT burn your fingers off: Soldering
In 202 we want to focus as much on hardware as on softwear. When we can, we will have various open projects and external meets dealing with hardwear, including instructions on how to solder microcontrollers just as Rasberry Pi’s.
:..>Wargames!
Not the movie. (We think?) While DEFCON 201 will still for research (and fun) various online Capture The Flag compeditions, we feel ready to kick off our next phase of DEFCON 201 CTF. Our goal is by July, we should have a working online Wargames portal. This will allow us to learn and perfect how to make individual games on various security topics, how to do point systems and to train our members in CTF. Once we perfect this, the second half of 2020 will be focused on finally making our own small-scale local CTF for our members to train on. If you want to help out or have any ideas, come and join us at our meetings and our special online Keybase chat we will annouce at future meetings.
:..>A Deep, Dark, Dirty Jersey
While the world wide web has worked gangbusters for us, we know we have fans all over the world (and even in the Unite States) that live in hostile web enviroments. We also want to be where even more hackers now and we just find the deep web cool. In the near future, we will have working Tor, i2p, ZeroNet and dat:// versions of our websites. IPFS is being considered. We are also going to make our website more accessable for low range computers and potato phones.
:..>Locks…Lots Of Locks.</KeanuVoice>
As you know, in the second half of 2019 we started to put together a solid locksport kit featuring lockpicks, practice tumblers and various real world locks including security pins. In 2020, DEFCON 201 is going to go plad on locksport, rogue and bypass entry. In addition of TOOOL membership, we will add Tubular Locks, Disk Detainers, Cruciform Keyways, Multi-T systems, Leaver Locks, Warded Keyways, Autmotive Tumblers and a whole galaxy of locks, picks and tention wrenches. Not that we need that for the meetings of course, but when you start to build a serious locksport collection, you tend to want to push it as far as it can go!
:..>Putting the Con in DEFCON 201
2020 is going to be a big year for conventions and hacker gatherings. In addition to many of the hacker conventions you would expect (including DEF CON 28 in addition to BSidesLV and Hackers on Planet Earth aka Ultimate Hacker Summer Camp), DEFCON 201 plans includes being at many unorthodox convetions where you would never expect a hacker group would show up. Look for more annoucements in the next couple of months!
:..>Accessability (and Representation), Damnit!
We think hacking and privacy is for everyone, so in 2020 we are going to continue to try to make our venue and material more accessable for everyone. With consent, in addition to recording our talks and putting them in a video archive, select talks at the speaker’s descression will be live streamed online. In addition to our accessable venue, we will have stickers to identify handles and for our guests to put their own pronouns on display. We also will look into making our fliers into braille and translating our print and web material into other languages such as Spanish!
:..>Community Outreach
As per our five points in our constitution, we will be doing many events locally in Jersey City and the Hudson County area. While many of these are not ready to be annouced yet, we are in on-going talks with the Jersey City Goverment and our partners to do public events to educate the population on hacking culture, privacy and security rights. This will fufill our role as a member of the Electronic Frontier Alliance and show the state of New Jersey what hackers are about!
See you at the next meet up!
