DEFCON 34's Badge Had a Hackable Open-Source Chip You Could Shine Infrared Through to Inspect Its Design

Every year, DEFCON’s electronic badge becomes one of the most talked-about pieces of hardware in the security community, and the DEFCON 34 badge pushes that tradition further. The badge acts as an electronic identity and interactive device for conference attendees, helping them participate in DEFCON activities, access badge-related challenges and interact with other attendees. Designed by renowned hardware hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang with the CHEESO team, it is built around the Baochip-1x, a mostly open-source RISC-V system-on-chip featuring a 350MHz VexRiscv processor, four PicoRV32 I/O cores, 2MB of SRAM and 4MB of ReRAM. It also includes secure key storage, cryptographic accelerators, a true random number generator and tamper-detection features.

During the conference, the badge becomes an interactive hacking platform rather than simply an entry credential. Attendees can use its display and buttons to explore built-in features and challenges, while the middle button can reveal a QR code that allows people to exchange encrypted light patterns with other badge holders. The badge also has two SAO (Shitty Add-On) ports, allowing the DEFCON community to connect their own hardware creations and expand its functionality. The removable core can also continue working independently as a FIDO2 and TOTP-compatible security key, giving the badge a practical purpose beyond the event.

What makes the badge especially unusual is its physical transparency. The Baochip-1x package supports IRIS (Infra-Red In-Situ) inspection, allowing users to shine infrared light through the chip and examine the silicon without destroying the package, then compare the visible transistor layout with the publicly released design files. The badge runs Xous OS, a Rust-based embedded microkernel designed for high-assurance applications, and includes a 128×128 monochrome OLED, a low-resolution QR-scanning camera and USB-C connectivity. With its conference interactions, hardware add-ons, security functions and inspectable chip, the DEFCON 34 badge is essentially a working open-hardware security platform that attendees can hack, modify, inspect and take home.