DEF CON Communities List

It’s finally here – a proper home for all things Badgelife on the con floor! This is our first year so bear with us, but we have big goals: This year we’ll be starting an effort to create the Badgelife Museum, a collection of current and former community-made badges, including SAO’s, on display at con! Donate your own badges and SAOs you’ve made or collected to the museum, and see them come back to con year after year.. or bring what you’ve got to trade with the community via our “take-one, leave-one” SAO Trading Wall, or our in-person Badge Trading meetups! If you’re interested in making Badges or SAOs yourself, we will have lots of interesting badge creators around showing off their work and giving workshops or lightning talks on their methodologies. Come learn from the best and meet your favorite creators at our various Badgemaker Meetups! Before and after con, you can find our Discord (and what will be our upcoming online Badge Archive) at http(s)://badge.life. Closer to con we’ll post our schedule for any con workshops, talks or activities on the site as well, so check there for meetup times. Hope to see you at the community!

The DC Maker’s Community is the place where design, electronics, arts, crafts, software, and engineering all intersect. We serve as a home for ALL hackers and makers – providing tools, demos, talks and workshops (from makers like those in the Badgelife community), as well as exhibit space for highlighting current and past creations from some of your favorite DEF CON makers.

DEF CON Next Gen is DEF CON’s official youth track, designed to help kids and teens ignite and grow their passion for cybersecurity. In collaboration with DEF CON villages and communities, DCNextGen offers a wide range of content, hands-on workshops, and exciting challenges that jumpstart young attendees’ cyber journeys. We host CTF competitions, have our own interactive electronic badge, and create the perfect environment for youth to connect, learn, and build lifelong friendships.

DCNextGen events are for youth 8-18.

Through this Community, attendees will be invited to learn about Capture the Flag competitions and try their hands at challenges hosted on the pwn.college platform. They will have the opportunity to learn fundamental hacking skills, including Linux basics, binary exploitation, reverse engineering, and web security, all while progressing through exercises designed to build expertise. With on-site mentorship from experienced hackers and top CTF players, attendees can receive guidance, troubleshoot challenges, and gain insights into real-world security problems. Beyond the technical learning, the event offers a chance to connect with like-minded individuals and engage with the broader cybersecurity community. Whether a beginner or an experienced player, attendees can expect an interactive, educational, and engaging experience tailored to developing practical hacking skills.

DEF CON is a favorite island of misfit toys. Finding your people is something many people struggle to do in their lifetime. But when you do find DEF CON, you want to take it home with you. DEF CON Groups is the cure to the Con Blues and the conversations, resources, and support that the DEF CON Groups Community at DEF CON provides encourages the creation of new groups, connecting Humans with their local groups, and reinvigorates existing groups with a community space that allows for a chill room vibe and fun atmosphere. We invite POCs and Group Participants to join in conversation, collaboration, trading group related stories, and of course, stickers and laughs as well.

We know DEF CON and Vegas can be a lot. If you’re a friend of Bill W who’s looking for a meeting or just a place to collect yourself, DEF CON 32 has you covered. Join us throughout the conference in the Friends of Bill W Community Space in room W301.

A place for people with disabilities to hear talks aimed at hacking disabilities / gear / specific topics on security and safety. To have a place to recharge assistance devices, get assistance with disability issues, to have a safe space to retreat should things get to be too much, to form community bonds with other hackers with disabilities and to be an educational outreach and support system showing that just because you have a disability you can still be a hacker and part of the community. Also a break area for service animals, and people with sensory issues.

Ever see someone walking around DEF CON and wonder “what is up with the hard hats?” The Hard Hat Brigade brings hackers together in the spirit of endless curiosity and tinkering. We use a common platform (hats) to combine art (bling) and hacker functionality (warez) to inspire others to explore outside of their comfort zones in a safe and welcoming community. We encourage everyone to explore their creativity using art, electronics, mechanical design, or any other medium that piques their interest. Hats are inexpensive, widely available, and easy to modify to suit your needs. We started with hard hats but are not limited to any type of hat, so you have the freedom to choose whatever hat suits your fancy. Despite everyone using a common platform, every creation is unique and embodies the personality of the creator. Walking around DEF CON, you can display your creation for all to see, and many will stop to ask you about what you have created. This allows you to talk about your experience, as well as inspire others to explore new ideas of their own. One of the challenges at hacker summer camp has been finding people to connect with. By leveraging hard hats as a canvas, HHB has solved this challenge with something that is incredibly accessible while also offering a ton of variety. Gazing upon these creations, they reflect back the uniqueness of all the awesome hackers that we’ve been able to meet. In years past, we’ve had the opportunity to see how so many talented and creative hackers tackle the challenge of using the venerable hard hat as their muse. Just as fun, charming and skilled as so many attendees are, the hard hat has been a great vessel to carry their awesome projects. Make your trip memorable by trying on a hat, learning and sharing building techniques, networking with other hat loving hackers, and expressing yourself in your own hacker way. Keep on hacking!

Bienvenidos a La Villa at DEF CON—where the pulse of Spanish and Portuguese cybersecurity beats loud and proud! Attendees can dive into a vibrant showcase of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking talent, featuring electrifying talks on cutting-edge hacking techniques, hands-on workshops to sharpen your skills, and creative showcases that blend culture with code. Expect to learn from top-tier Latino hackers as they unveil innovative exploits, share insider knowledge, and spark collaboration—all in Español and Português. Participate in networking sessions that connect you with a passionate community, or join the stage to pitch your groundbreaking ideas. La Villa isn’t just a space—it’s a launchpad for Hispanic and “Bienvenidos a La Villa at DEF CON—where the pulse of Spanish and Portuguese cybersecurity beats loud and proud! Attendees can dive into a vibrant showcase of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking talent, featuring electrifying talks on cutting-edge hacking techniques, hands-on workshops to sharpen your skills, and creative showcases that blend culture with code. Expect to learn from top-tier Latino hackers as they unveil innovative exploits, share insider knowledge, and spark collaboration—all in Español and Português. Participate in networking sessions that connect you with a passionate community, or join the stage to pitch your groundbreaking ideas. La Villa isn’t just a space—it’s a launchpad for Hispanic and Portuguese speakers’ brilliance, proving that talent knows no borders. Get ready to hack, connect, and shine!” brilliance, proving that talent knows no borders. Get ready to hack, connect, and shine!

Lonely Hackers Club is a group to help people navigate their first DEF CON and other conferences as well as helping people break into the field. We have a lot of people who are from all sorts of fields who can help people based on what they want to do for a career. We welcome everyone into the community and support everyone who needs/wants help.

The DEF CON Memorial Chamber serves as a sacred space within our community — a place where we pause to honor those hackers whose brilliance and dedication have elevated not just our craft, but the entire security ecosystem. Here we remember figures whose generous spirit and willingness to coordinate security fixes demonstrated that true hacking greatness lies in collaboration. We are here because DEF CON has been the beating heart of the hacker community for over three decades, growing from 100 people in 1993 to the world’s largest hacker conference. As Jeff Moss envisioned, DEF CON is what we make of it, this memorial space represents our commitment to ensuring that the legacy of those we’ve lost continues to inspire future generations of hackers to pursue knowledge, build community, and use their gifts to make the world better.

In a world full of unwanted app updates and SaaS providers who want your personal information, being able to self host one of the largest collections of software on the planet in a stable way across updates with NixOS has the potential to change the game for anyone who’s tired of the slow decline of cloud services. With a single line of code, you can deploy self-hosted services repeatably across as many machines as you want.

Even if you don’t run NixOS, building software with Nix allows you to deploy it across different Linux distributions and architectures. No longer do you have to build entire distributions into Docker images or flatpaks that bitrot – Nix can do that too, and it can do it over and over again. Set up a development shell to provide friends or coworkers access to dev environments, and build your software the same way every time, with upwards of 120,000 packages you can leverage.

Access to services and software everywhere: that’s Nix. Welcome to Nix Vegas, where we want to rebuild the world.

OWASP, the Open Worldwide Application Security Project, is an open source steward of tools, documents, and resources all underpinned by our community. People are the fabric that composes the OWASP community from developers, security pros, hobbyists, students & hackers and we are eager to welcome all at DEFCON 33.

Queercon’s mission is to raise awareness and promote acceptance of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the IT and infosec industries. We create space for queer people to meet, engage, and network through our badges, puzzle challenges, and meet-up events – all designed to help queer people find community where they are not alone. The Queercon Community Lounge is a place to find community anew, or return to familiar faces. Keep an eye on Hacker Tracker or queercon.org for our schedule of meetups and challenges!

The Retro Tech Community is back! We’re here for our 2nd year to celebrate where we came from, how computers and technology of yesteryear shaped our lives, and to show how the first generations of computers still have an impact on and a place in today’s world. Rather than a stuffy collection of museum exhibits you can’t touch or breathe on, our goal is to be fully interactive! We encourage the Defcon community to take part by bringing in working examples of old (or new but retro-inspired) technology to display, demonstrate, be passionate about, teach lessons on, and allow those who visit us to goof around with. We love to see people indulge their inner nostalgia nerd. Bring us your tired capacitors, your scratched cases, your huddled masses of cartridges and expansion cards yearning to see voltage again, the wretched refuse of your teeming e-waste pile, bring these the tempest-tost to us, we lift our 20A 120V circuits beside the golden door! Walk-ins are welcome to long as you have a plan to store or bring it back home should we be out of display room 🙂 Broken items are welcome as well – come start an impromptu repair party! We’re confident that smart and inquiring minds will be around to help you solve issues, and we’ll lend equipment where we can. Bring and show off your rare and weird vintage machines or retro consoles, or disks and cartridges of your favorite childhood games! All circuits are welcome here. Note: Due to staffing limitations, hours may fluctuate, but we will do our best to stay open for as much of con as we can. If you miss us, check back soon! If you wish to support our efforts, display something, or donate hardware, please coordinate with reanimationxp (at) gmail.com, subject “Retro Tech Community”!

The Diana Initiative’s Community Room

In our collaborative area we will be hosting birds of a feather conversations, small round table discussions, and more.

Our reference desk can help you come up with a plan before going back out into DEF CON, if you would like. The reference desk will work to find and connect you with the amazing events and communities at the conference, as well as in the community at large, that are best suited to your interests.

Finally, for those who find it hard to dive into something new alone, we will be offering small tour groups to take people around to various villages, contests and communities.

The Diana Initiative’s Quiet Room

Diana Initiative is excited to offer up a “Quiet Room”. This room is a library vibes environment where people can calm down or recharge before going back out to experience more DEF CON, or even safely have a meltdown, stim, and take time to recenter. In our library area we will have fidget toys, coloring pages and more.

Co-founded in 2018 by Jim McMurry and William Kimble, the founders of ThreatHunter.ai and Cyber Defense Technologies, respectively, the VETCON conference is the official Veteran event of the DEF CON Hacker Conference. VETCON, through its Discord server and in person events, connects and supports veterans in the Information Security field. The event is open to all DEFCON attendees with a focus on military veterans. VETCON is a networking event where attendees will be able to relax, play fun military and cybersecurity related games, network, and connect with other Veterans in the Infosec field.

VETCON Is a Conference for Veterans, Run by Veterans, During the Largest Hacker Conference, DEF CON.

Women in Security and Privacy (WISP)’s mission is to advance women and underrepresented communities to lead the future of privacy and security. We accomplish this by providing women and underrepresented communities with opportunities for technical and professional development through events, trainings, conferences, scholarships, mentoring, and job search. WISP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.