DEF CON 30 Activity Schedule

Home...DEF CON 30DEF CON 30 Activity Schedule

DEF CON 30 Aerospace Village Activity Schedule

    • Workshops & CTFs will operate at specific times and format listed in the schedule.
    • Check official DEF CON updates for latest DC30 COVID guidelines

Activities & Workshops

Pen Test Partners A320 Simulator (10:00 to 12:00, 13:00 to 15:00 Friday and Saturday, 10:00 to 12:00 Sunday)

Come take the controls of Pen Test Partners’ immersive A320 simulator. Experience the effects of tampered electronic flight bag data on take-off and landing, TCAS spoofing and more all in the safety of the sim. You’ll see how experienced pilots would deal with these incidents and mitigate risk to passengers and the airplane.

Required gear: none

Boeing ARINC 429 Airplane Challenge and CTF (10:00 to 16:00 Friday and Saturday)

Boeing Test & Evaluation (T&E) has developed two modules to provide an interactive learning environment and engagement opportunity on ARINC 429 data bus. Three modules will be offered, including a 10-15 minute guided discussion on the basics of ARINC 429, highlighting the key components necessary to participate in the two interactive modules. Boeing will provide an interactive learning environment to improve situational awareness of ARINC 429 data bus and promote discussion on Cyber T&E across the aviation industry. After completing the basics guided tour, participants may engage in one or both of events, the Airplane Challenge and CTF.

In order to get participants familiar with ARINC 429 concepts, there will be a presentation introducing 429 and the challenge environment at 10:30 and 13:00 both days.

Event #1 – Airplane Challenge (“AC”): during this event the user is presented with a user interface to send their own crafted 429 messages. The participant will be assigned an airplane on a map with the objectives of navigating the airplane to a win condition.

Event #2 – Capture The Flag (CTF): The participants will connect into the CTF to take on challenges involving protocol and message manipulation. The participant will be able to validate each flag found in order to complete the event!

Required gear: for the AC, you will need a mobile phone and/or Laptop with ability to connect to WiFi. For the CTF you will need a laptop and ethernet cable

Signups: first come first serve!

Hack-A-Sat Digital Twin Workshop (10:00 to 17:00 Friday and Saturday, 10:00 to 13:00 Sunday)

The Hack-A-Sat team is working hard to build the next competition platform for the Hack-A-Sat 3 (HAS3) Finals competition, where space math, hacking, and satellite operations are interwoven into a realistic space CTF environment. We will be demoing the HAS3 digital twin satellite in the Aerospace Village for participants to experience basic satellite command & control operations and flight software exploitation with two challenges created specifically for DEF CON. This year’s digital twin brings new tools, processor architecture, and physics simulation capabilities that we will be unveiling for the first time.

Required gear: We are hosting the demo on our own hardware so all you need to bring is your own desire to “Learn. Space. Faster”.

Signups: first come first serve, come by the Aerospace Village during its normal operating hours!

Hack-A-Sat Aerospace PiSat Challenge (12:00 to 17:00 Friday and Saturday)

Engineers at the Aerospace Corporation are hosting a CTF using the PiSat platform (check out the PiSat Workshop also in the Aerospace Village). Teams will command a PiSat via a COSMOS web GUI and complete challenges, which will be announced during the event. The CTF will primarily use crosslinks between PiSats to complete tasks including attacking other PiSats. Rounds will last ten minutes each, but teams can stay for up to one hour.

Required gear: bring a laptop (with an ethernet port!) to compete in the contest.

Signups: Sign-ups for the event will be in person each morning from 10am – 12pm and will be first come, first served.

Amazon Web Services Aerospace and Satellite Jam (10:00 to 17:00 Friday and Saturday)

Jams are immersive engagements that encourage you to up-level your security and coding skills on AWS through the use of hands-on real-world scenarios. The scenarios have varying level of difficulty and points associated with them. Jam engagements allow you to identify strengths, areas of improvement, and the ability to work together in team or individual challenges. Participating will help you advance your cloud cyber skills, hone your problem-solving abilities, and better understand and appreciate the complex set of threat vectors that the aerospace and satellite community confront every day. You will gain experience with a wide range of AWS services in a series of prepared scenarios across aerospace and satellite use cases and operational tasks. Come prepared to stop threat actors from laterally moving through your virtual flight operations center. Detect manipulated imagery in your satellite imagery analysis pipeline. Defend against a DDOS attack on your satellite ground station receiver network. Harden your virtual twin Mars rover against Internet of Things (IoT) attacks. There’s never a dull moment to work in space! 

Required gear: Laptop and connection required to access the jam environment, set up DEF CON WiFi in advance!

Hack the Airfield with DDS (10:00 to 17:00 Friday and Saturday, 10:00 to 13:00 Sunday)

Hack the Airfield is broken down into two primary components, the aircraft and the system used to locate and find them.

Bricks in the Air

Learn how avionics systems work in a safe and fun way in our Bricks in the Air workshop that simulates an environment requiring similar approaches to hacking on actual aviation buses without using any of the real hardware, protocols, or commands. Challengers can freely play and develop skills without worrying about legalities or sensitivities of real systems.

Spoofing ADS-B

ADS-B is the latest version of Identify Friend or Foe (IFF), which is the common name for cooperative radar surveillance of aircraft. Unlike traditional IFF, in ADS-B the aircraft periodically sends a broadcast out roughly every half second to alert all nearby receivers of its current location. These broadcasts are unencrypted and fairly easy to spoof, allowing anyone to create as many aircraft as they want. Stop by the workshop and learn what it takes to spoof fake aircraft into the system used to track them.

Required gear: none!

Satellite Eavesdropping with DDS (10:00 to 17:00 Friday and Saturday, 10:00 to 13:00 Sunday)

Satellite communications are used by millions of people every day. From television broadcasts to internet services, satellites bring connectivity beyond the reach of wired infrastructure. In this lab, you’ll learn about one of the most popular satellite communications protocols – DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcasting for Satellite) – and how anyone with inexpensive radio equipment and freely available software can intercept and listen to these signals.

Required gear: none!

Cyber Star© Competition presented by the Space ISAC (13:00 Friday)

Cyber Star© is a role-play game exploring the implications of cyber security on the projection of space power. Players compete to become the predominant space power by carefully investing in space assets, ASAT weapons, and cyber capabilities both to advance their own objectives and thwart those of their opponents. No specialized knowledge or skills are required to play.

This competition will consist of a practice round, main round, and finals. The winner will receive a 2022 Aerospace Village Badge!

Ask an Aerospace Expert and Career Guidance Session (13:00 to 15:00 Friday and Saturday) 

Visit the Aerospace Village to discuss your career trajectory with public and private industry leaders. Prepare your questions to help hone your skills and prepare for a future in aerospace cybersecurity.

Red Balloon FailSAT Challenges (10:00 to 16:00 Friday and Saturday, 10:00 to 12:00 Sunday)

Red Balloon Security will provide satellite modems as well as a small satellite for the modems to communicate with. We will provide support and training at the event to help people work through all steps of the challenges using OFRAK. OFRAK (Open Firmware Reverse Analysis Konsole) combines the ability to unpack, analyze, modify, and repack binaries & firmware in a single application. 

PwnSat Challenge 

Participants will analyze and modify the modem firmware with the goal of successfully patching in shellcode to send malicious commands to the CubeSat to make it spin. Modifications may include – disabling firewall, finding credentials, and shellcode writing + injection. Winners with the most interesting CubeSat spin results will be rewarded with a prize. 

Safe Space: Satellite Control Patching  

In this challenge, participants will have the opportunity to construct and apply a patch modeled after a real world bug detected in spacecrafts. The challenge will be to understand and patch code that’s trying to solve an equation, but has a bug that makes the satellite unusable. We provide guidance on how to identify the mistake and present multiple approaches in increasing degrees of patching complexity. 

Hack the Airport with IntelliGenesis (10:00 to 17:00 Friday and Saturday, 10:00 to 13:00 Sunday)

Can you restore the Aerospace Village runway lighting system? IntelliGenesis will be holding a mini-Hack the Airport that is designed to showcase the impact of a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure commercial or government facilities; specifically, Aviation Control Systems. Transportation Systems is one of the 16 Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency Critical Infrastructure Sectors for the US. There is a hyper focus on cybersecurity surrounding airports and the critical infrastructure systems supporting aviation operations. Come on over and give it an attempt, there will be 4 stages culminating in restoring the lighting system so that the village can begin landing and launching aircraft. All levels of experience can participate.

Signups: beginning Monday 8/8 – but not required to participate

California Cybersecurity Institute Space Grand Challenge (9:00 Friday through 17:00 Saturday)

The DEF CON participants will be learning how the convergence of cybersecurity and space connect! The gamified satellite cybercrime scenario, “Mission Kolluxium Z-85-0” is ready for the next Space Captain! This is a beginner challenge. Unity based game that explores Space, Orbital Mechanics, Satellite Hacking, Deep Space Networks, Digital Forensics, Python, Wireshark, Blockchain, and Ethics! This is a great chance for a CyberNaut to learn something new! 

Please register here and look for an email close to the competition day for instructions: https://www.cognitoforms.com/CCI17/SpaceGrandChallengeAEROSPACEVILLAGEDEFCON2022

Email Support here during DEF CON 30.

[Online] Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Deep Space Network/ION

Using ION (Interplanetary Overlay Network) software, we will check out the various pre-defined communications tests and set up Wireshark to capture traffic generated by those tests. We will then look inside the trace files to analyze the traffic patterns used by interplanetary communications. Space communications are cool.

Bio: Laura Chappell and Ginny Spicer are members of the Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group (IPNSIG) Technical Documentation Working Group, Architecture and Governance Working Group, and IPNSIG Academy. Together, they examine and document space-based communication protocols using Wireshark.

Workshop PCAP Files: bundle7-ion-hitchhikers2