Now, now, don't get too excited. Creator Joe Grand designed it to be hacked. Still, 10 minutes is a pretty respectable time for the soldering, reprogramming and reflashing job done by Dave Bullock, Wired's photographer at the event. The badge features an LED display with scrolling text, and it even has an easter egg (typing in 31337 outputs "$kingpin$", the board maker's handle.) Dave hacked the press badge, but the badge shown is an Uber Badge, Joe Grand's, actually. They're given away as prizes at DefCon, and are lifetime passes to DefCon. [Wired, but beautiful photos from Dave]

I should point out that the badge that was hacked was actually my press badge, and that uber badge shown is Joe Grand's (badge designer) personal badge. Those black badges are given away as prizes for various defcon activities and provide the recipient with a lifetime free pass to defcon.

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