DEF CON's response to the badge controversy

https://old.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1ep00ln/def_cons_response_to_the_badge_controversy/

by mmastrac • 2 years ago

274 258 2 years ago

old.reddit.com

mmastrac• 2 years ago

There's basically three sides to the story now, for reference:

Entropic statement:

https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement

dmitrygr statement:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41207469

dmitrygr being removed:

https://x.com/dmitrygr/status/1822124650547257637

sergiotapia2• 2 years ago

tldr: entropic made some mistakes because they're a small team with a very tight deadline. defcon shit the bed and refused to pay them over those problems. and dmitry forgot about an easter egg and was OK with being removed from speaking, but wanted security to pull him off stage for his clout.

I still think DEFCON should've done better. their brand is in the shitter over what $20k?

tptacek26• 2 years ago

What should they have done better? They didn't have the option of doing better with Dmitry, right? He deliberately set up the confrontation with security.

The idea that DEF CON's brand is "in the shitter" seems risible. I say that ruefully, as (in my declining years) I get more and more bitter about the comic convention spectacle the event has become. Whatever the outcome from "badge-gate", I assure you, they'll set attendance records next year regardless.

BoredPositron• 2 years ago

Honestly sounds like typical "CON" stuff. Just children all around no matter the topic.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

Reading both accounts of the story, it sounds like a small company bit off more than it could chew, couldn’t manage cost and schedule, and when it got to the drop-dead date, even though they say it was basically done (how many times did the client hear that one), the client pulled the plug and tried to salvage it some other way.

Y’all need project managers, at least someone with a plan! jeez.

viccis2• 2 years ago

dmitry forgot about an easter egg

Ah yes, classic "insert an unauthorized coin wallet soliciting money from badge owners" easter egg. Timeless prank, how could anyone be mad at such a normal and anodyne "easter egg"?

lmao DEFCON's "brand" isn't in any danger.

edit: And now he's pulling the classic hacker move of (checks notes) enforcing strict software IP ownership rights? Guy's a class act all around. Hope everyone learned an important lesson about Dmitry and Entropic with this mess.

simpaticoder• 2 years ago

Thank you. This stood out to me:

"They expressed that they specifically wanted to work with us as a woman-owned, queer- and POC-driven engineering firm to develop an electronic badge with a gaming element for this year’s conference."

I would have expected the core criteria to be ability to execute on time. Choosing an engineering firm based on the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the owner is foolish, and DEF CON is ultimately to blame for introducing superfluous criteria and missing the core criteria.

cj• 2 years ago

That sentence seems like the most irrelevant part of all of what I’ve read.

They could have easily rephrased that sentence to simply say “They expressed interest in working with us” and the point they’re making is the same.

foundry27• 2 years ago

It’s concerning to me that this has been downvoted so heavily.

Obviously as a private group DEF CON’s organizers have every right to contract with whatever companies they want to. In the same way, obviously the private individuals paying DEF CON’s organizers have every right to criticize them when they treat their contractors so poorly. However , I think it’s short-sighted and self-defeating to suggest that they shouldn’t ALSO have the right to criticize their choice of companies they work with when it impacts the quality of what they’re paying for.

This is not a sexist, anti-POC, or anti-trans criticism. Deciding on contractors for the reasons they claimed they did would be illegal in the public sector under France’s anti-discrimination laws, under Germany’s Grundgesetz, under Japan’s GPA, under the UK’s Equality Act in many cases, etc.

wang_li2• 2 years ago

In Entropic's statement they say:

and, especially, keeping a community eye on law enforcement and conference security to help ensure our friend Dmitry’s safety in the last 48 hours.

Has there been anything in all this that would suggest anyone was in danger at the conference?

This kind of comment about safety is pretty standard among very progressive communities anytime anyone disagrees with them.

ipaddr3• 2 years ago

This makes DEF CON look foolish and past it's prime. You would think technical requirements would be the only criteria used but I guess they wanted this project to make political gains with a certain community instead of just making badges.

jhaand5• 2 years ago

DEFCON did not do proper estimation, risk analysis and due diligence with ordering these badges. Also if the cat design and other things were done by the Defcon orga and the electronics by EE, then this already sounds like a complicated mess.

If I look at the Defcon30 badge from 2022. It's the same thing. A small random engineering shop is selected and gets the order. And you get a nice little badge that can do stuff.

For the Dutch hacker camps we look a bit more long term and the engineers and designers have been part of the core team since 2017. And for 2025 we're already well underway.

https://badge.team

mindslight2• 2 years ago

In 2024, that statement doesn't really indicate much of anything. Traditionally, interfacing with the business world involved retaining an underemployed white guy who would wax poetic about the virtues of playing golf [0] or owning a boat. Now the trends have shifted to professing a different type of identity politics. The vectoralists with the old fashioned motif have even landed on their feet, spawning a cottage industry of bemoaning how unfair the world is. Plus ça change.

[0] the boring version without moving obstacles, PVC pipes, or fiberglass dinosaurs - further adding insult to injury

joemazerino• 2 years ago

Another productivity victim to the woke movement.

darksim9054• 2 years ago

when did they actually start working on it? ToyMakers starts their work right after a conference ends to prepare for the next conference. The logistics and scale even for several hundred badges is immense.

account42• 2 years ago

It's also an odd thing to bring up in their statement.

neilv2• 2 years ago

Regarding "https://x.com/dmitrygr/status/1822124650547257637", was there some kind of written consent involved in being removed like that?

Or some less formal consent was understood, and considered low-risk?

Or were they otherwise legally empowered to do that?

(I'm thinking about civil and criminal liability.)

metadat• 2 years ago

It's a private event on private property. There is no inherent right to be there, especially up on stage without invitation (TFA mentions this was what happened).

tptacek26• 2 years ago

I believe DEF CON on this, because the other side of the story --- that they vindictively withheld payment from Entropic and later harassed the firmware developer --- just doesn't make any sense. We are probably talking about rounding error sums of money for the conference organizers themselves.

gavinhoward• 2 years ago

National politicians have taken bribes for less.

woodruffw• 2 years ago

National politicians have legible incentives. What’s the incentive for DEF CON here? It’s not like they’re apart from the community; people know exactly who they are, and the existence of their conference is tied entirely to the community’s perception of their leadership.

JonChesterfield• 2 years ago

People do petty stupid things.

My priors align with the client having unreasonable expectations and then squabbling over the inconsequential bill. That is totally a thing that clients sometimes do.

tptacek26• 2 years ago

Having spent a very long time as a consultant, a thing vendors sometimes do is commit to unrealistic project schedules and then attempt to invoice their way out of the hole they've dug for themselves, and by "sometimes" I mean "every times, every of the times", it is one of the most common ways consulting projects blow up.

When your project blows up, the professional thing to do is to resolve the problem with the client before billing another hour over the SOW. The common, crazy thing to do instead is optimistic invoicing: the client must share our priors, we're all reasonable people, so we'll just implicitly revise the SOW to match our learnings on this project and proceed, prioritizing what we believe would be a successful delivery of the project over everything else. That rarely works.

Serious consultancies routinely eat billable weeks of time in order to meet client success criteria and retain relationships.

squigz4• 2 years ago

How much money do you think the DEFCON organizers make?

tptacek26• 2 years ago

Their top line is 8 figures annually.

tux3• 2 years ago

The groans you hear on Reddit and social make it sound like this isn't DEF CON's first time finding itself in this kind of kerfuffle with a contractor

Why reach for a stop work order if the whole thing is a rounding error. Entropic seems like they were able to finish, except that cost was an issue

mvdtnz5• 2 years ago

Why reach for a stop work order if the whole thing is a rounding error.

My interpretation is that the project was at risk of not being delivered. No doubt Entropic had made and broken many promises leading to the stop work, and at some point DEF CON needs to take ownership of the project in order to ensure delivery.

refulgentis• 2 years ago

For me, it was in the attempted follow-up, "We told them almost impossible, too risky, do it for 2025! --- and they just didn't listen!" (real quote in [1])

My alarm bells go off loud when people invoke tropes indirectly and lazily, hoping it'll influence my perception of a situation

DEFCON isn't the pointy-haired boss stereotype that needs you to deliver exactly $X, this quarter, with duct tape and glue. They know tech and wouldn't have talked a team saying they can't do it until 2025 into 2024.

Well, what if they really wanted it for publicity?

DEFCON had 0 stake in a new Raspberry Pi release, and Entropic self-reports they were the ones with early access to an unreleased product and decided it was the right vehicle. [2]

[1] We were clear as early as our first conversation in January that the risk in trying to push to mass production of this size and on this timeline was immense, even advocating for a DEFCON 2025 release of this particular badge. DEFCON’s Badge Team remained confident that they could meet and mitigate this risk.

[2] The specifics of what they requested in January were extremely difficult / almost impossible, but we had been working with Raspberry Pi as a Design Partner and had early access to the unreleased Raspberry Pi RP 2350, a chip that would enable exactly the kind of device DEFCON was requesting.

aftbit• 2 years ago

That's kinda weird too, as DEFCON does electronic badges every other year, so they would not really be able to delay this project until 2025, but would instead need to delay to 2026 and hire a different vendor for 2024.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

The whining in the Entropic's statement about how "extremely difficult / almost impossible" the project was is what gets me. Come on--you're grown-ass adults that signed a contract to deliver X work by Y date. Nobody cares how hard it was. I've been on the other side of the coin many times, managing a small vendor who's in over their head, and I try to have empathy, but where is the project manager? Where are the milestones and checkpoints? They didn't suddenly stop-work out of the blue. I'd guess multiple checkpoints were missed, and everyone knew this was coming.

And that’s not even mentioning the Easter Egg! Good grief!

jdnsndn4• 2 years ago

Exactly. A badge is not really rocket science, there are no real hidden risks.

I read about the $20 target price, which I find quite hard to reach, but that is something you know before you agree to deliver X by date Y costing Z

InsideOutSanta• 2 years ago

I think the issue is that they got used to pulling a rabbit out of a hat with their badges. The budget they have for them is apparently ridiculously low, and it seems like sheer luck that it somehow worked out in the past. At some point, defcon must have confused luck with skill. Meanwhile, others paid the price for that by working "for exposure."

This year, it blew up in everybody's faces. Whose fault is it? Defcon, for having unrealistic budgets? Contractors, for taking on an unrealistic project for the prestige?

IMO there's plenty of blame to go around.

M4v3R• 2 years ago

I would say the fault is on the both sides. Defcon being so big knew that someone will pick up their unrealistic budget. But it’s still the contractor’s fault if they took a project with full knowledge of its scope and agreed on the price, and then did not deliver.

Arainach• 2 years ago

HN comments were dismissive of the Google SRE "no heroes" article recently, but this is a great example of why that policy is in place. Heroism leads to unrealistic expectations until something implodes far more catastrophically than setting reasonable expectations and not killing yourself to make magic would have.

jonhohle• 2 years ago

The last defcon I attended (5 or so years ago) they didn’t pull a rabbit out of the hat and we ended up with lame plastic badges. Obviously badges aren’t everything, but they’re not nothing either.

Sakos• 2 years ago

I don't understand why DEFCON deserves the benefit of the doubt, but Entropic and dmitry don't. Here's Entropic's response:

We were clear as early as our first conversation in January that the risk in trying to push to mass production of this size and on this timeline was immense, even advocating for a DEFCON 2025 release of this particular badge. DEFCON’s Badge Team remained confident that they could meet and mitigate this risk.
Once a month, we billed for our work and submitted an updated estimated per badge final cost - committing as costs built to discount our work as necessary in order to hit DEFCON’s per unit cost targets.
In June, after 5 months of late night work, badges were fully designed, prototypes were working, and mass production was ongoing with the manufacturers we contracted on behalf of DEFCON. We billed DEFCON for our most recent work, discounting our labor by 25% in order to meet the agreed upon targets. Unfortunately, we were instead met with a work stoppage request and informed we would no longer be paid for services already rendered.

https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement

It feels to me like DEFCON is relying on being able to say "well, we're DEFCON" when defending themselves, and people like you are just blindly trusting their word. How many times have big organizations like this screwed their suppliers? And yet DEFCON is "clearly" innocent? You must be joking.

At least wait until we get a better picture of everything before deciding on a judgment of any of the parties involved. It's going to take time before we find out what actually happened.

tptacek26• 2 years ago

DEF CON is making a falsifiable claim, that Entropic blew their budget and billed outside the SOW. Entropic is handwaving (who gives a shit what RPi hardware they had access to?). I'm not in DEF CON's corner generally but my priors as a consultant lock in pretty solidly on this being a consultant fuckup.

TheCleric• 2 years ago

We were clear as early as our first conversation in January that the risk in trying to push to mass production of this size and on this timeline was immense, even advocating for a DEFCON 2025 release of this particular badge. DEFCON’s Badge Team remained confident that they could meet and mitigate this risk.

Assuming this is true it’s simple: you walk away. If you’re being contracted to do something you don’t think you can do, you don’t sign the contract. Anything else is a recipe for pain.

robxorb• 2 years ago

That a mostly-finished, working project of this complexity ends in fiasco can't be the fault of the contractors. What failed is communications - and apparently only on one side. Both Entropic and Dmitry were shocked by this outcome; not communicated with.

bawolff7• 2 years ago

If the "joke" involved shilling for crypto, that instantly makes me more sympathetic to the defcon side.

lowkey• 2 years ago

I genuinely don’t mean to be snarky but I don’t think the method of soliciting donations is at all relevant here. It sounds like you would have otherwise been fine if he handed out a hat and asked for cash in USD.

lmm2• 2 years ago

Are they wrong? Passing around a hat for USD might be unprofessional but it's a lot more open and honest.

superb_dev2• 2 years ago

Crypto has a bad reputation, it makes sense to be more upset about someone soliciting donations in crypto over USD. Especially in a branded product

bawolff7• 2 years ago

I think crypto has a certain scummy reputation that really doesn't help the situation. However i would feel the same way if they put a paypal link.

If the person just passed a hat, i think that would be fine (albeit weird and cringe) because the objectionable part was sneaking it into the badge. Asking for mony outside of the badge would not raise the same concerns with me.

mvdtnz5• 2 years ago

This is a great example of why both sides of a story are needed. From DEF CON's perspective, assuming this is all true, there's nothing unreasonable here. It sounds like Dmitry was a subcontractor of Entropic and producing a screen asking for money after their contract had been terminated (for good-sounding reasons) was bad form.

I'm not commenting on the legalities (I don't know anything about contract law) and I don't necessarily take either side's account at face value, but this response doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

notinmykernel• 2 years ago

Dmitry didn't ask for money. He raised awareness that DEFCON had slinked away from its financial obligation to Entropic, and asked that Entropic be paid what they are owed for their work on the hardware.

Cool spin though.

mintplant• 2 years ago

Dmitry was a volunteer and did all the firmware work for free. "Subcontractor" is DEF CON PR spin.

yunohn• 2 years ago

Who forced him to do all this work, if neither DEFCON nor EE were employing/contracting him? Why was he even given access to this project then?

lolc2• 2 years ago

If we believe the firmware's author that it was volunteer work, who was relying on him? Entropic or Defcon?

Did Entropic promise to deliver the firmware?

And assuming Entropic did promise a firmware, would the "stop work" order also affect firmware? Apparently the "easter egg" was added after that order.

timthelion• 2 years ago

Am I the only pne who lmthinks it is rediculously wastefull to have electronic badges for all atendees?

wmf• 2 years ago

It's a form of swag and one of the reasons for attending.

cdchn6• 2 years ago

No, when the point of the badges is to hack and repurpose them, they're arguably _less_ wasteful than a simple paper & plastic badge.

kelnos12• 2 years ago

I don't disagree with the joy in producing these kinds of badges, but I do wonder how many people actually do anything with them after the conference, aside from tossing them on a shelf to collect dust for years. Which IMO is genuinely sad! But I suspect that's what happens to the majority of them, even considering the type of person who attends a conference like DEFCON.

JKCalhoun• 2 years ago

From the outside, it certainly looks to me like the whole badge thing has become a monster. Something that began as cute, clever — but one-upmanship over the years has taken a toll.

mvdtnz5• 2 years ago

This is a great example of why both sides of a story are needed. From DEF CON's perspective, assuming this is all true, there's nothing unreasonable here.

It sounds like Dmitry was a subcontractor of Entropic and producing a screen asking for money after their contract had been terminated (for good-sounding reasons) was bad form. I'm not commenting on the legalities (I don't know anything about contract law) and I don't necessarily take either side's account at face value, but this response doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

theogravity3• 2 years ago

Dmitry has repeatedly stated he was not hired by Entropic nor was asking to be paid for his work. He did it for fun. I'm not sure where this misunderstanding is coming from.

luckylion• 2 years ago

He apparently put in extra code showing a wallet address (presumably his) and the request to "donate".

Does sound like "asking to be paid", even if it's then switched to "it was all a prank, bro" when it turns out that wasn't the greatest idea.

thomascountz4• 2 years ago

To add: Dmitry has stated that EE owns the wallet address.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/s/Ch5NvKWuns

rcxdude2• 2 years ago

Why scrub their name from the badge though? That just seems like being vindictive.

tptacek26• 2 years ago

According to DC: they scrubbed their name from a component of the badge Entropic had no part in creating; they retained Entropic's name on Entropic's actual parts.

dang• 2 years ago

Previous related thread:

Defcon stiffs badge HW vendor, drags FW author offstage during talk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41207221 - Aug 2024 (118 comments)

briandear• 2 years ago

What’s a badge and why does it need firmware? This is a conference right? Not a nuclear silo?

ironhaven• 2 years ago

DEF CON as a hacking convention has a long tradition of sometimes instead of giving printed name tags during registration like normal conferences but printed circuit boards with microcontrollers and firmware (aka software).

Some years had ctf challenges in the firmware this year there was a playable game boy emulator.

mafuyu2• 2 years ago

Reading EE and DEFCON’s statements, I’m inclined to think whoever was managing this on DEFCON’s side was not on top of things and blinked at the last minute. I’m sure there were delays and issues on EE’s end, as it always goes with hardware, but it’s still EE’s design, parts sourcing, and manufacturing run that DEFCON just took over last minute?

I don’t know the terms of their contract, but that wouldn’t fly in a typical contractor setup. You can’t just cut out the contractors labor costs after the fact. I’d be more inclined to give DEFCON the benefit of the doubt if they canceled the entire project earlier on and engaged a different contractor to build an entirely different badge from scratch.

Given that dimitri wasn’t even paid for the firmware(!), my guess is this was low budget. For something of DEFCON’s scale, this can’t really be a “for fun” hacker project if you want to guarantee results. The “for fun” part is ensuring the attendees can all have a good time hacking on the badge, not the people doing the labor.

tptacek26• 2 years ago

On the contrary, if you have a signed master and SOW for a project, you absolutely cannot just bill over or outside of the SOW because of "contractors labor costs". The whole point of contracts is to agree to costs up front and eliminate these kinds of on-the-fly disputes.

minkles• 2 years ago

Clearly you've never worked on a government project!

I was on a defence project that overshot by a cool billion dollars on the SOW...

mafuyu2• 2 years ago

Agreed. I’m honestly not familiar with how they’re structured for hardware contracts like this. I was imagining some sort of cost plus structure. No point in speculating on the details of a contract dispute where we don’t have the contract, I suppose.

I was under the mistaken understanding that EE was not paid out at all. Rereading their statement, they say they were partially paid, so I think I was overly harsh. This is firmly in “boring, messy contract dispute” territory now, I’d say. :)

bjornsing3• 2 years ago

But as I understand it EE did not bill outside or over the SOW. They just sent updated cost estimates indicating that they wanted to.

firesteelrain4• 2 years ago

What kind of contract was it? If it’s cost plus you sure can

dredmorbius• 2 years ago

SOW: Statement of work.

<https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/what-is-a-sow/>

thelittleone• 2 years ago

Its not uncommon for a contract and SOW to include an hourly rate for approved out of scope items.

jhaand5• 2 years ago

It depends on the contract. I will never just do a single SOW contract and risk it all. I will do an hourly contract and maybe give a discount if a certain amount of money is spent because things get tough. The client will get an estimation but in this day and age, prices will vary in a few months.

Entropic Engineering should not have gone through with this project on this timescale of 6 months with a new chip. Defcon badge team doesn't know how to properly outsource electronics, collaborate and do risk management.

mlyle• 2 years ago

DEF CON's response reeks of petty; characterizing dmitry as a "subcontractor" rather than a volunteer for spin purposes, and the choice to remove Entropic's logo from the case based on this budget dispute.

echoangle5• 2 years ago

I think the point of calling Dmitry a subcontractor was to make clear that dmitry worked for/with EE, not DEF CON.

rasz4• 2 years ago

You can’t just cut out the contractors labor costs after the fact.

Its not after the fact, thats exactly what Stop-Work Order was for.

bjornsing3• 2 years ago

EE claims that DEF CON does not want to pay up until the stop-work order though. So it seems to be at least a bit “after the fact”.

darksim9054• 2 years ago

why would DEFCON go with such a small outfit?

ThinkBeat• 2 years ago

Man DefCon has changed since I was a regular. Back when all tickets were sold by cash only

A hacker conference is upset that someone "hacked" their badges. and put unwanted code into the firmware. Users are (meant) to be hacking these boards. That is the entire point isn't it?

Have guys who did it come in in, talk about the exploit, share how they did it. Then the corpDefCon can talk about what they missed and how to avoid it. Have a talk "How DefCon got hacked"

Have some fun for f-sake. Tangent man, come on.

"" Unfortunately, shortly before the talk was set to take place DEF CON became aware that unauthorized code had been included in the firmware we had paid Entropic Engineering to produce, ""

willcipriano• 2 years ago

You have to get into something cool before it has a reddit dedicated to it otherwise the killjoys will infest it and their calls of "actually!" will ruin all your fun.

guardiangod• 2 years ago

It seems that 2 issues are conflated together-

1. The badge manufacturing issue and subsequent non-payment due to contract dispute.

2. The firmware author (not hired by the manufacturer) put in unauthorized 'easter egg' code that asks for money via crypto.

I am not familiar with 1 so I can't comment on a contract dispute.

But 2 is definitely over the line, and this is coming from me who is supportive of some usage of cryptocurrency. You don't put in unexpected monetization mechanisms into your volunteer work, without asking the charity organization for permission. Asking for money secretly is way different than putting in a harmless Easter egg. At that point, it's not a harmless easter egg anymore.

Maybe the money is for the manufacturer. In that case, do what a normal person would do and raise the issue on a social channel (eg. Twitter, Thread, blog).

kelnos12• 2 years ago

Maybe the money is for the manufacturer.

Yes, it was for the manufacturer, not for the firmware author himself.

I agree that he shouldn't have put in the donation solicitation, but I think DEFCON's response to kick him out of his talk was an overreaction. Especially considering what prompted the easter egg was DEFCON removing the Entropic's badge credit from the badge case that they were promised. Even if DEFCON's statement about the manufacturing/cost issues with the badge (your point 1) was entirely true, the final badge that ended up in attendees' hands was still almost completely Entropic's and Dmitry's work, and they deserve credit for putting together something of that complexity in such a short time frame.

No one is coming out of this looking perfectly rosy, regardless of the truth behind things. The donation link was over the line, but DEFCON's change to the badge case was completely unethical, and disinviting Dmitry from the badge talk over an inappropriate easter egg was a dirty thing to do.

mrandish• 2 years ago

Just skimming the top level of various back and forth claims, I can already tell this is one of those situations where there are too many variables, disparate communications, perspectives, individual recollections and partial retellings, all about a unique, one-off transaction, and all evolving over a significant period of time between individuals who are not deeply experienced business people - to confidently conclude anything about ultimate fault based on the currently available statements and posts.

Given this complexity and confusion, short of conducting a full court trial with months of document subpoenas and depositions under oath, IMHO, confidently believing you've arrived at a complete, objective understanding of who is right or wrong is as likely to be incorrect as it is correct. And, at this point, this probably holds true for most of the actual participants too.

I base this on decades of experience untangling screwed up business transactions and communications. No matter how thorough, credible and complete a certain retelling seems, I've often discovered there is another layer (sometimes even unknown to many of those involved) which changes enough to shift whatever I initially believed. I've had this cycle of "Aha, now I understand" / "Oh... wait. No I don't" repeat several times while digging through a single incident.

WalterBright• 2 years ago

"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any steenkin badges."

xyst• 2 years ago

I have read all accounts and points of view. Defcon clearly dropped the ball here. Whoever was managing this badge creation team should never be allowed near defcon again. I am very unlikely to recommend or go to any future defcon events unless defcon makes this right with the vendor.

The DEFCON community is and has always been near and dear to my heart; I started my local DEFCON group as a kid growing up in Malaysia decades ago

Sad that people (defcon) use and abuse the passion of others. EE let DEFCON step all over them. EE even discounted the labor in the invoices to defcon to meet whatever vague budget they had.

This is just a reminder that you should never meet or work with your childhood heroes. The reality is they will most likely take advantage of this.

the_real_cher3• 2 years ago

Def Con is the Coachella of tech conferences.

Its an event kids go to to have fun with their friends.

They have game rooms and furry parades karaoke and cool badges!

And their website doesnt work.

https://forum.defcon.org/calendar

Its not a serious event any more.

What are the real infosec conferences these days?

SSchick• 2 years ago

The furry part is most certainly true.

the_real_cher3• 2 years ago

All of it is true.

Sytten• 2 years ago

Have you even attended? It is not a corporate event doesn't mean it is not serious. Real conf, what sort of gatekeeping is that.

There is still zero days being dropped and you meet a lot of the smartest people in infosec.

the_real_cher3• 2 years ago

"Gatekeeping"

cdchn6• 2 years ago

There are a ton of other infosec conferences where you'll meet just as many if not more of the smartest people, with a much better SNR.

bitexploder• 2 years ago

Cansecwest, recon, there are tons of great, much smaller venues. Blackhat is more and more like RSA, and DC is more and more just a time to hang out with friends and catch up. The size of crowds is just unbelievable. My first DefCon was 18 years ago. It’s just so different.

ianhawes• 2 years ago

Your local BSides.

tptacek26• 2 years ago

Black Hat is the "real" security conference that runs alongside DEF CON.

cdchn6• 2 years ago

Dmitry is posted on reddit that he is going to DMCA DEFCON for using his code unauthorized and is granting napkin licenses to people in reddit comments or who had the badge signed at DC https://www.reddit.com/user/dmitrygr/

thomascountz4• 2 years ago

If the agreement with EE included the delivery of firmware (of which Dmitry is the original license holder), DF is responsible for acquiring the software licensing agreement. If EE signed the licensing agreement, claiming to be the license holder, it would be EE who misrepresented their claim and would be noncompliant. DF has a duty to verify that EE can issue licenses, but I'm unsure how far is considered adequate with respect to damages or license violations.

jdnsndn4• 2 years ago

There is also a thing called concludent action. If the FW author gave DC the firmware with the expectation the firmware will be used on the devices and DC did just that, there might be an implicit license granted

chriscappuccio• 2 years ago

These badges sound pretty cool. I'd like to get one without attending.

rasz4• 2 years ago

After going overbudget by more than 60%
discount our work as necessary in order to hit DEFCON’s per unit cost targets

Sounds like DEF CON established a budged and you kept going over it. No wonder they did a stop work order.

thomascountz4• 2 years ago

The specifics of what they requested in January were extremely difficult / almost impossible, but we had been working with Raspberry Pi as a Design Partner and had early access to the unreleased Raspberry Pi RP 2350, a chip that would enable exactly the kind of device DEFCON was requesting. Dmitry and Entropic had already been working on a GB emulator and were thrilled to be able to contribute our work to a project directly for and by the community. [0]

Despite the project being "impossible," EE made some sort of agreement to complete the work and deliver within time and budget. EE, not DC, made the decision to work with Dmitry.

I am not a subcontractor of anyone. I was doing this in my own free time for fun so attendees have a fun badge. There exist no contracts between me and anyone. It was an evenings-and-weekends project for me [1]

This work by Dmitry was unpaid, presumed: uninvoiced and not under contract directly with DF, and is not an agent of ES.

While we as a company did not ask Dmitry to program the easter egg, the outpouring of support and community for EE has been appreciated and inspiring. [0]

EE did not request the Easter egg be included by Dmitry. As a free agent (not under contract) Dmitry is free to do as they wish. Dmitry's involvement with DF was an invitation to participate on a panel. Given the discovery of the Easter egg, DF withdrew the invitation. Without any explicit agreement, it is irrelevant as to why DF would withdraw their invitation as it is presumed DF can withdraw any such privileges at anytime for any reason, though a reason was given in the case.

At this point, all work had been completed except our physically attending the overseas production run and providing ongoing troubleshooting/debugging. In fact, the day we received this surprising news, we were actively working on the SD card debug that became a central concern earlier this week. [0]

This sounds consistent with DF's claim that the product was still in pre-production and all services had not yet fully been rendered, therefore, the original agreement may already have been breached at this point. What is "owed," is likely no longer stipulated under the main clauses of the contract.

EE has tried multiple times over the past months to negotiate fair compensation for work completed prior to June 7th, but attempts at resolution have been unsuccessful. [0]
Once a month, we billed for our work and submitted an updated estimated per badge final cost - committing as costs built to discount our work as necessary in order to hit DEFCON’s per unit cost targets. [0]
Once the manufacturing was fully completed, we were offered a one-time “take it or leave it” amount worth well under half of what we were owed pre-stoppage. Given that what we were owed was already discounted by 25% in order to hit agreed upon cost targets, this has had a huge impact on our small team. [0]
We have also continued to pour lots of time, effort, and love into the project post-stoppage. I want to be clear that we never expected to be paid for this post-stoppage work, but simply did it as a labor of love for the community. [0]

This is contract dispute. What EE is "owed" is defined (or should be defined) in the agreement. What is "invoiced," despite any "discount", does not, on its own, constitute what is owed by DF. Unbilled and discounted labor significantly complicates this, especially if it was not itemized as such on the invoices sent to DF. Parts and materials, which come with invoices attached, should be paid per the agreement.

Any claims that DEF CON did not pay Entropic Engineering for its hardware or firmware development are false.[OP source]

My assumption is the agreement was for a fixed-cost fixed-timeline per-badge payment and the targets were not met, despite EE trying their best. The claims made by both sides are verifiable by receipts and, should it come to that, can be arbitrated either by a court of law or the court of PR (public relations, ie, the internet).

Regarding Dmitry's experience and the Easter egg, for better or worse, DF can make whatever decision they please at their conference. The Easter egg was antagonistic towards DF and is significantly unrelated to the payment dispute with EE. The Easter egg being a "prank" or "difficult to find" or "not technically owned by DF," is also unrelated (although the code seems to be part of services rendered to DF by the agreement with EE [0]).

We were clear as early as our first conversation in January that the risk in trying to push to mass production of this size and on this timeline was immense, even advocating for a DEFCON 2025 release of this particular badge. DEFCON’s Badge Team remained confident that they could meet and mitigate this risk. [0]

EE' admissions illustrates that DF's decision to push forward with this vendor was ill-advised. Given their experience, it would have been charitable to not put EE in this position. Arguably, DF did mitigate their risk (financial and reputational risk) by issuing a stop order and seeing the product to completion by other means; attendees did get their badges after all. By admission, EE also recognized the risk themselves and continuing their attempt to render the agreement under the circumstances was also ill-advised. Their risk (to reputation) was also managed by providing free labor. This is unrelated to the payment dispute as both parties chose, and were not forced, to continue to engage under the terms of their agreement until such time the agreement was made null. The only dispute is in regards to the original agreement, which should be rendered whole by the terms of the contract that were completed and satisfied by EE.

[0]: EE's statement. https://www.entropicengineering.com/defcon-32-statement

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/s/OwxYvX1Z5z

rdl• 2 years ago

I don't understand how volunteer, non-sworn officer, non nevada licensed security guards (volunteer "goons", who are just private citizens at a private event in a public convention center) can use physical force to take a non-violent trespasser off stage without exposing themselves personally and their organization to substantial liability. Not super familiar with Nevada law.

(Obviously doing crowd control, providing information, and front line emergency response is absolutely fine, although tbh even that they should probably have guard cards in most jurisdictions for liability reasons. If someone is violently disruptive, as a private citizen go for it, but unauthorized speaking on stage is pretty far from that. Would be hilarious if dude makes more money from that than he was stiffed by his employer.)

tptacek26• 2 years ago

I doubt this is anywhere even close to the frontier of physical confrontation DEF CON goons have been involved in in the last 10 years; it's a drunk, druggy conference. I imagine at this point they know what the boundaries are. And if you're going to use words like "non-sworn", let's acknowledge that Dmitry was surely better off being escorted out by the Goons than by actual Vegas security.

ensignavenger• 2 years ago

The USA has fairly robust personal property laws. Each state is a little different, but for the most part, you have a right to defend yourself and your property, including removing trespassers from your property.

mindslight2• 2 years ago

I'm not trying to defend DEF CON's overall actions here, but in this case it looks like the physical interaction itself was essentially consensual? The goons asked Dmitry to leave, his response indicated that he wasn't going to leave voluntarily on his own but also that he would cooperate with a minimal physical display that demonstrated the non-voluntary dynamic. I suspect that if he had physically resisted or even just gone limp, they would have escalated to actual security guards, who then may have laid actual criminal trespassing charges (if for nothing else than to cover themselves).

DarkmSparks• 2 years ago

defcon complaining that firmware they dont have a licence to use and distribute has a semi malicious easter egg....

defcon cheats, defcon loses.

creer• 2 years ago

More summary of how it apparently went at defcon https://old.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1eoe4u7/so_the_guy_...

fsckboy• 2 years ago

I can't reply to dang's informational post, but in light of the new claims from defcon, isn't the previous discussion title potentially defamatory?

(dang) Previous related thread: Defcon stiffs badge HW vendor, drags FW author offstage during talk

rurban• 2 years ago

I don't know DT (Dark Tangent) aka Jeff Moss, the one who got pissed at dmitryg to throw him out. Is this his usual behavior?

From his time-line https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Moss_(hacker) "Later career" he seems to be CIA: Council of Foreign Relations member, and Atlantic Council member. But it would fit to the other folks who I got to know from this background.

kazinator• 2 years ago

I like M. Hutchins' take:

https://infosec.exchange/@malwaretech/112947643197413295

DEF CON's response to the badge controversy

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