Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we have with us Mr. Thomas Franco, the former General Secretary of All India Bank Offices Confederation. We'll discuss with him today about the recent crisis in the Indian banking sector and the reasons for the mounting NPS. Welcome, sir. Sir, of late we are hearing a lot of news about the crisis in the Indian banks. From your perspective, what are the basic reasons behind these issues? It is not true that banking sector is in any crisis. This is a man-made crisis. The Reserve Bank of India had been changing the norms for non-performing assertions because of which the like, they had a 360 days norms, then it became 180, then it became 90, suddenly they said it will be one day now because of which the number of NPS and outstanding NPA has increased. A detail analysis of this has been done by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance and submitted to the government on 16th February 2016 itself where they have analysed the root cause for the NPA and they have also suggested what are the alternatives, what is to be done. Unfortunately three years have gone the government has not taken any action on that. For example, they have clearly analysed that one major reason for the non-performing assertions is the position of the economy. The economy is not growing. So when it is not growing naturally it will affect on the banking sector. Similarly they have said there has been inordinate delay in completion of projects. Another reason is the global breakdown. These are some of the reasons they have analysed and they have suggested as remedies, few things. There are 16 recommendations but some of the major ones I would like to touch upon. One is that they have said the developmental financial institutions, DFIs. We had ICICI we had HDFC we had IDBA. These were all converted into universal bonds. They were created for long-term finance. So now the long-term finance was forced on the public sector. So they have suggested that you should revived development financial institutions. That has not been done. Second, they had given a very easy and good solution. The outstanding NPA is large in the infrastructures and infrastructure finance is supposed to be a long-term finance. Whereas banks collect deposits for 5 years, so they are not supposed to give long-term loans. Instead of that, they have been forced to. So what Ramadi they have suggested is that let the development financial institutions like one of the which is still existing the industrial finance corporation let it take over these loans. The banks books become clean. That loan let them convert it into a long-term finance. So the infrastructure which is being created, which is getting into a crisis also can stand on its own. When the finance is converted into a long-term finance 15 years, 20 years, they have a breathing time and it takes time also for them to earn profit. So with the lengthening of the repayment period lengthening the period, they will start repaying and those loans ultimately become the performing assets and infrastructure will be helped, economy will be helped. These banks once their books are clean, now they will start lending more and that way it will give a boost to the economy. That has not been done. They have also said that you should take action on the managing directors and the board of directors who are responsible for the large corporate NPS especially in the case of defaults which have taken, which is called the quick mortality and no action has been taken. They have suggested that Reserve Bank which is having a controlling responsibility should not ask their people to sit in the boards of the banks to take credit decisions. That has not been implemented. Reserve Department of Financial Services they have their representatives in the boards of the bank they were party to the decision so they should also be held accountable. None of this has been done. So because of that the NPA is mounting and they brought in these schemes called the insolvency and bankruptcy code and national company law tribunal where more of write-offs are taking place in the name of higher cuts rather than recovery. So it is a crisis created by the policies of the government. So the government has to take responsibility and alter the policies that has not been done. Speaking about NPAs, the mounting NPAs has always been a problem. The larger loans are very high whereas the loans given to the farmers small scale enterprises are very small. So what policy need a policy change is needed to balance this particular issue? From the day of starting up banks there has been NPA. Bank knows any lender will know that the entire loan will not come back. There can be many reasons for which somebody may die, somebody's business may collapse, there may be a calamity so you will not be able to replace. So you always keep a provision of that. And we have been writing off loans which was not creating a crisis to the banks balance it because earlier our loans were small loans. If you look at the data of Reserve Bank of India 1990 most of the loans were small loans. 99% of the total number of loans were less than 2 lakh loans. So if 100 loan goes back bad also that right-off is not going to affect your large balance sheet. But after 90 the Government of India changed its focus. They changed the lending policy. They removed the MRTP act monopoly and restrictive trade practices act. They removed the credit authorization scheme which we had to take permission for giving any loan more than 1 crore. Many policy decisions were taken because of which banks started lending more to the larger borrowers. Again there was reduction in the bank staff. 10 years there was no recruitment. There was a VRS given called Golden Bank and Shake where in one year 134,000 people left the banks. So banks also found it difficult to cater to smaller borrowers. So the concentration of credit went to the corporate's large borrowers. You see the last year's data which is available in Reserve Bank. The number of loans as well as outstanding is much more with larger borrowers. There are around 14,000 borrowers who have taken loans more than 100 crores. Who constitute total 38% of the total loans given. Just 14,000 people have cornered 38% of the total loans given in the entire banking sector. And RVA itself has given figures that the larger NPA is in the corporate sector. 86% of the total NPA belongs to the corporates. So unless you solve that problem how can you solve the banking crisis of NPA? That effort is not being taken. So what I would suggest is that now they should change the policies provide more staff have more branches and encourage small loans. It is this farmers it is this allied agriculture agriculture small industries cottage industries artisan who create local employment and that employment is a major problem in the country. This can happen by redirecting the credit to the smaller borrowers. So what the government speaks volumes about making the day better for the common people but whereas their policies continue to favor the corporates. See now they are doing a large exercise in the banking sector. Bank, MDs and chairmen who are called for a meeting for two days at Delhi which was addressed by the finance minister as well as officials of the finance ministry and the eight so called experts who are called to speak to them. Already the former finance minister who was just passed away had been doing a review almost every two months he used to review the progress of banks directly with the MDs and chairmen of the bank which was very rare earlier. So if something has gone wrong it is he and his ministry who are responsible for what has gone wrong. Now this exercise what they are doing they called eight so called experts they call Uday Kotak who is the managing director of Kotak Mahendra Bank which is a small bank in existence only for few years to tell the public sector bank MDs and chairmen of public sector banks what is to be done for the public sector banks governance. So they are indirectly saying that the public sector banks are so weak to get advice from a private banker and the funniest advice given by him is that he talks such nonsensical language and he says now that 370 has been removed in Kashmir now time has come for the government to act on the public sector banks you have to privatize them and he is giving an easy option first of all you do one thing at least give 26% of the public sector banks share to a private bank so we become partner with this bank and then we will improve the banks governance how many of the private sector banks are doing so robust you have seen what is happening in ICIC we have seen what has happened in access so many other banks and it is because of failures of many private sector banks that nationalization have to take place so this is one example secondly they call Nandan Nilkeni who had been heading Infosys who had been heading UIDI that the solution here is digital so you digitize everything all problems will be solved without having a basic understanding that 26% of the population cannot read and write and they also require banking and you have opened Nandan accounts for them almost 90% of the people are not fluent with English so what is your technology of digital banking going to help them number 3 there are so many frauds taking place in the digital media after the universal payment system which UPI they started there are so many frauds taking place when you link your Aadhar card and the UPI calls up and asks for your password saying that we are calling from the bank you share it within seconds everything is gone and you don't know where it has gone there is no way of tracing the money where it has gone with this very bad security process they are asking us to go digital and with that he is saying that go digital go digital and you start charging for the services earlier ATM anytime you can any number of time you could withdraw everything there is a charge you go to a post machine there is a charge detected so unless the people are comfortable for using technology by forcing it you cannot succeed even in developed countries like US still now 50% of the people are using cash they find it convenient so this focus again is a wrong prescription then Aditya Puri which is the chairman of the HDFC bank he comes and talks about retail lending you increase your retail advance every bank knows that they would be comfortable by giving more loans to housing more personal loans to salary people more loans to the farmers because where the recovery is also sure and it does not require a private bank someone tell the public sector bank what is retail lending what is lagging there is that retail lending requires larger number of workforce larger number of branches rural branches, semi-urban branches have to increase you are having business correspondence 360,000 of them who cannot take ready decisions so what you require is a larger workforce that you are not addressing salary and allowance is an issue for the bankers tell like employees are struggling for the last 2 years for a bank wage which has not happened so they are not happy you are not addressing that but you just force people if everybody is going to give only retail lending what do you do with your huge quantity of deposit you are keeping larger borrowers that kind of a solution as if the bankers who have worked for 30 years, 35 years in the banks does not know anything you bring in the so called experts who do not really know what is a public sector bank and you are giving solution that is not going to work now a large exercise only like 50,000 bank branches the branch managers who are called their own respective regions and review meetings to play series of questions if you look at the focus of the question itself you know what is their intention why corporate loans have gone down so that means you want the banks to once again lend more to the corporates without addressing the problem of the corporate NPA number 2 why mudra loans are not mudra loans are being given large number of loans have been given by the banking sector where as for an award report already 60% of the mudra loans have gone bad they have become NPA but the government claims that mudra loans has been a great success as a policy decision they are claiming it as a success only looking at the numbers you should see whether it is really used for doing a business or running a factory whether repayment is coming without looking at that just by number saying that it is a huge success is not correct and mudra loans are now getting totally politicized the ruling party representatives though they go with the loan application and they brought in some funny scheme called 59 minutes loan where you are parting money with some unknown fellow who is going to give you only a provisional sanction that that does not make any sense at all and in few days one unknown company made crores of money by just making them download the application and after that you go to the bank bank has to follow all the norms and that scheme and whereas government claims that it is a great success you should look at the figures and mudra loan yes the businessmen small industries they require loan but you have to create a conducive atmosphere for them you brought in demonetization you brought in GST where still people have not understood for which what percentage government and every month you are supposed to file a return which they are not capable small people how they will be able to afford to do all that has affected that sector now just by asking to give some more loan the solution is not going to come similarly they are asking questions on NPA why NPA has increased as if they don't know as I told you there are enough studies reports available including parliament report analyzing the root cause of the problem but now again you are asking the employees to tell them and now they are ranking the employees based on that performance there is a huge fear that they are likely to send out some people saying that you are not performing up to the mark performance depends on many factors somebody in an interior area in a rural area his opportunity for performance might be much much lesser so performance cannot be just based on how many loans we have given so that is again actually creating a fear psychosis among the employees then you have not created a correct mechanism for recovering the loans they are asking questions about start of India scheme Swach Bharat scheme very you create an atmosphere for that start-ups can succeed only if government provides adequate support to them now they have said that they are removing deffering the angel tax that is a small portion how much of the money for a new start-up entrepreneur how much comes from an angel investor it is a very small amount and for that waving tax ok fine for few years you don't collect tax is fine but that is not the solution you look at the countries like China or Israel where start-ups are being given lot of support like Israel start-up you have an idea the government gives the sheet capital in China the banks are asked to support this start-up knowing fully well that at least 80% is likely to fail but that failure the blame will not be put on the bank instead the government gives financial support to augment that shortage for the banks because of which without hesitation banks especially the development financial institution they are giving loans here you see at that atmosphere but just force banks to lend more loan more to the start-ups that's not going to happen because finally as a banker when I decide on a credit I have to look at whether the business vendor is going to succeed whether the money is going to come back once that guarantee is not there I will not attempt to give that loan or just to satisfy the number give a small loan and show that I have given so many loans which will not really help the economy or the borough


So we're going to start right now with our first 10 o'clock talk. It's called Making the DEF CON Badge. And we have MK Factor, Michael and Katie Whiteley. And we want to thank everyone for coming here today. We know it's been a challenging time for everyone to come to DEF CON. And we all appreciate for all you guys coming because it makes the community a lot stronger. But on the other hand, please be safe.  And please be considerate for everyone. One thing I want to mention is that due to the change of no Q&A after the talks, we're doing meeting greets at the Chila area right behind you at 6 o'clock. So let's roll. Let's start DEF CON 29, baby. So for those of you wondering, technically, I'm on a stage. And so therefore, the mask rule does not apply to me because I'm a performer on a stage in Las Vegas. That's how they write the rules here. But I'm fully vaccinated. I will not project onto you. I could try speaking with us on. It kind of works if it makes everybody feel better. But anyway, welcome to DEF CON 29. This is going to be sort of a combined. I want to do a little welcome briefly, and then we're going to kick it off to the badge designers. So I just want to give you a little bit of a perspective of what it was like kind of behind the curtain, building up to this. We were at no time where we ever really certain this would actually happen. We tried to make it happen. We all worked very hard. But now that we're here, it can't stop. So we now feel really comfortable that it's happening because I can see you. That must be real. And so we knew DEF CON was going to be different. And we knew it had to be hybrid, something we've never done before. Because even if everything was perfect in the United States, it wasn't perfect for everybody else in the world. And they weren't going to be able to travel and get to DEF CON. And so it won't really be fair for us to party down in the States and not have an option or any way for other people who maybe weren't vaccinated or couldn't be or had small children. So we early on made this decision. It has to be a hybrid event. And what does that mean? We'll figure it out. And so what we have figured out is happening right now on Discord. And so it's really interesting because I'll be walking down the hallway.  And I'm on Discord. And I'm on Twitter. And all these different streams are happening. And everybody is kind of bridging these gaps together.  And then there's the Discord DT happening at the same time. And so the big difficulty for us with timelines, you have to order things months in advance for a lot of these. And you'll hear the steam keep coming up when we start talking about the badge. But it's everything, signing contracts, ordering parts. And then, of course, nothing goes smoothly. The supply chain war with China heats up. And all of a sudden everything's two weeks later than you thought. Oh, OK, well then I guess we're not selling that product anymore. In the swag store, we just can't get them. And so people have been really understanding, I think. And so I want to kind of give a round of applause to you. This is a different year. And normally we'd want things to be super polished. We're really excited that it's happening. And we're happier here. And we're going to try to make it the best experience as possible. But please bear with us. There will be some turbulence ahead. But that said, just how chill does this feel? Right? I was walking around Black Hat. And I was like, something is different. I mean, is it a self-selection of people? Is it the people are just so excited to be there? But same thing there. People are just really happy to hang out and see each other. And I'm feeling the same vibe here. And I was at the pool last night. And it was just actually kind of reminiscent a little bit of the Alexis Park days. People just chilling out at the pool, dodging cockroaches, having a drink. It was really, really cool. So I'm really happy that it's coming together. And normally there's a lot of fires. And I'm thinking maybe because we shrank down to two properties from five, there's just less things to burn. So we have a few less problems. So the network was up sooner. Just a lot of things were smoother. I'm not saying that we're going to stay this size next year for our 30th anniversary. But enjoy it while it lasts. Because I hope by next year we'll have a for real single event, not a hybrid event. Because it's like doing two and a half events. It burns everybody out. Everybody is stressed out. It's too much work. And so we really, really hope that this is a one time experience. We'll still do stuff on Discord next year, but it's not going to be like a full on duplicate event. It's just you can't do it without hurting everybody's sanity. So another thing I wanted to touch on is we're all wearing these bracelets for vaccination. We've all got our masks. And early on, there was a lot of pressure for DEF CON to pick a standard. I mean, the pressure was from inside. It was from outside. The organization, and it was, you know what? We need to pick something and stick to it. Let's pick WTO. Let's pick WHO. Let's pick CDC. I'm not WTO, CDC. And then that way, when people are angry, we can say, yeah, but those are the doctors. Those are the experts. And then we can just make it their problem. And that was really appealing, except they kept changing their stories. And my dad was a career physician his whole life. And so I'd ask him. And generally, it was like, well, it's an airborne virus. You're not going to catch it in your ear, right? You are not going to catch it looking doorknobs. You're going to breathe it in. It's like, OK, well, then masks. That wasn't very hard. And then there's going to be a vaccine. OK, vaccines. Like, the decisions are sort of made for you. So very early on, we just decided, well, there's an airborne virus. There's going to be masks. And if there's a vaccine for it, there's going to be a vaccine requirement.  And I think in the end, ultimately, that was our right decision, because we never changed our story. And watching the CDC flip-flop and switch around it was so stressful. But we knew our messaging was always consistent. So I hope you heard that messaging. And I hope you appreciated it, because it was a lot of pressure on us to change. But I think in the end, we did the right thing. And I hope you. So that was the little back story. And finally, we can all pat ourselves on the back for making the right call. But on the journey here, it was not always totally clear that that was the right call. OK, so now, new badge designers. You've got some new tech hanging around your neck. We're going to talk about that a little bit. So since we really represent the community and we really try to be a reflection of the trends and the interests, we rotate through. We've had different designers, Joe Grand. We had Lost Boy. And when it was time to have a new designer, instead of us just going and picking someone, hey, you know, Maria, let's have you do it, we decided to do a call. We do call for papers. Let's do a call for badge designers. So our first ever call for badge designers went out.  And we're evaluating them. And of course, it's kind of last minute. And now we have to decide, are you getting a badge designer for an in-person physical? So you want it to be tactile and you want it to be nice. But it's got to be socially distanced. So you don't want people to bunch up or to stare over each other's shoulders so much. But some people aren't attending so it has to work virtually. And they're going to be on their computer so it might need to work remotely. And it's something that we have to mail that won't get destroyed in the mail. But it can't have big batteries because you can't mail batteries. And I mean, it just starts going on and on and on. And you go out there and you realize people have not, I mean, we're kind of a unique situation. Badge designers in the badge life world don't routinely make 10, 20, 30,000 badges. They don't do that. They make 200, 300, maybe 1,000 or so. And so you can't say, show me your portfolio badge maker of all the 20,000 bad shows you've done that doesn't exist. So we also have to take the risk of who do we believe will actually pull it off. Like when we're talking to them, do they seem overly confident? Do they seem like they know their limitations and they're willing to talk frankly to us about their limitations so we don't blow up each other's reputations? And so we started selecting down and selecting down. We got down to just a handful of just two designers. And it was really trying to decide between the two. And in all things being equal, we decided really, we really liked MK. We really liked their community approach. We liked the art, we liked the design. And every time we threw them a curve ball, they kind of went with it, they kind of got it. And we didn't have to have another design call to really walk through the 59 permutations of why we were making a change. And so we figured, yes, we can really work with these designers with MK. And so that's why we selected them. And so they're gonna talk about their journey. I've got some slides that are updated past what we've already posted on YouTube. So this'll be new to you if you've watched the YouTube one. And then we'll have a little bit of a conversation about it and hopefully some time for Q&A. And so that's it. So this will be the beginning of our DEF CON and then we'll close it all out with our closing ceremonies as we traditionally do. We've got some other announcements we wanna make. I'll make it now and I'll make it again closing just so maybe you can spread the word around to other people at DEF CON. Just like we do a call for papers and we've done a call for badge makers, we did a call for CTF organizers. An order of the overflow is the designer, is the organizers. But a call for CTF organizers is for four years. We want a four-year commitment. So there's some consistency because the first year you do it, it's never the way you wanted it. And then you learn and you grow. And by about your fourth year, you're running on all cylinders and everything's great. So this is the order of the overflow's final year, their fourth year. Which means for DEF CON 30 or 30th anniversary, we're gonna have a new CTF organizers. So what we'll do is we'll announce that pretty soon. We'll start evaluating it. The OOO will be around to help, mentor or teach whoever we select. So just the renewal of our community goes on with new ideas and new approaches. And so that will be happening with CTF for next year, just like it did with badge designers this year. And so even if you're not really into CTF, if you kind of appreciate it, maybe go over to the CTF place and say, hey, right on. You guys did an awesome job, and show them some appreciation because they really done it and taken our CTF to the next level. It's really cool. Okay, so I'm gonna put my mask back on and we're gonna pass it off to the M in the K, or the K in the M from where I'm sitting. So thank you, everyone. Hope you enjoy the talk. This is scary. Look at all your beautiful faces. So good to see you guys. All right, so, yeah, I hope everyone loves the badge. Awesome, any haters out there? I like your sign. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, this was the first time we got all the different badge types together. It's super exciting.  If any of you have seen Between Two Ferns, did a little spoof on that sitting there with a couple of printers. So go watch that. It's really awkward. It's great. You're welcome. And yeah, we totally just set that up in our kitchen. All right, so this is the badge. Let's talk a little bit about what it does and what you can do with it. So it's a two stack, you know, board sandwich kind of protects most of the components. So hopefully we don't have things getting knocked off and broken this year as much as it has in the past. On the end, you've got the two USB connectors. And one thing we really wanted was being able to interact with fellow attendees, right? And so there are six connectors to connect with. Little side ones. You can just connect real quick and it'll do some challenge stuff. But with the USB, you can do some games. I don't know if any of you have tried that yet. I've heard some beeping out there. It's awesome. I'd love to hear it. Brings us great joy. And so you can connect more than two. I've seen some decent sized chains. I want to see what we can do, right? Get some really long chains of badges together playing. A 16-bit chain? Yeah, 16-bit. That's your limit. So go to town. Oh, by the way, if any of you haven't found the lanyard hole, it's labeled on your badge. Yeah? Sure. So we, when it came to designing this, we're like, he had the great idea. He's like, wouldn't it be fun if it was a USB cable? And we did a lot of the research because he's amazing. He found these cables and we're like, that would be kind of fun. That would be something that hasn't been done before. I haven't seen it in any con. I don't know if anyone else has. We were, words are hard. When we found it, it definitely clinched the fact that we were gonna do USB-C as well. And now we have made it so that we can have social distancing-ish with connecting of the badges as well. Well, and that, I think it was what? C versus micro. Yeah. And this was our deciding factor, I think was the lanyard that we found. Yeah, talk about the cost versus the durability. Yeah, so USB-C connectors are obviously way more durable, but they're a lot more expensive. But in the last couple years, prices have come down a lot. And so we can just about get USB-C connectors from overseas for the same price as micro USB we can get here. So that really helped this year. We really wanted to do two USB-C connectors for the daisy chaining, but we could only get the lanyards and A to C. So that was our decision there. So for those of you who are curious like I was, they sent me a sample lanyard and I immediately opened it up to see what's inside. So you don't have to open your lanyards. This is what's in there. I mainly wanted to see if it was like a flexible circuit board type cable, which I really didn't want because they're not reliable and they break. So this is more like what's inside headphone wires when it runs through the badge. Yeah, so this was the sample they sent me didn't have data lines, just power. But these ones have data lines. Yep. All right, Jeff kind of already talked about this, but yeah, we... We made the funny joke. Wouldn't it be funny someday if we did the DEF CON badge? And then he comes up to me and he's like, hey, they're doing a call for badge makers. Do you want to do it? And I was like, I'm sorry, what? Yeah, sure, we won't get picked. Let's do it. It'll be funny. It'll be a fun story to say we applied once. We got on the call and we were kind of in starstruck because we're like, we are talking to Jeff Moss. This is cool. We got this. We'll be fine. The stages of going through it, it was exciting and exhilarating and definitely challenged us as badge makers. We had to think of things that we've never had to think before and I don't know, it was enjoyable. I actually, it was stressful because like, holy crap, this is happening, but we really enjoyed the process. Yeah, so the call for badge designers went out early February. We got called at the end of February and started that process, which took about a month. So this was our timeline. March 24th to August 4th, more months than 11 days. For context, normal badge design is double that, six to nine months is normal for a small conference. That means he had four months to put this together. So I think he did great. All right, so when we got picked March 24th, it happened to be that we were going on vacation. The next morning we left and drove out to Mississippi to see her family. And so this is me and my mother-in-law's house designing a badge. Trying to find microcontrollers because anyone else who's been trying to find them is it super easy? No, no, no, no, there. So we were trying to find which controller we were gonna use and I was like, all right, go to buy it and he's like, it's not there anymore. Son of a. Yeah, we went through I think four different microcontrollers. Pick one that would work. It was available. We'd start designing a prototype and then it was gone before we could get boards back. So in the end we picked one that were like, yeah, it's got enough pins and memory and it should work and we just bought them without trying it. It worked out. All right. So we really wanted something that could kind of tessellate. Was that the word I wanted? Yeah, yeah, words are hard. So we played with several different ideas. I really ended up, for me, I love the square as you can tell, because that's what we ended up with. We thought about doing a circle. We thought about just doing square, like little rectangles, but I love the idea of the cubert thing where you could connect them and make whatever shape you kind of wanted. And it looks kind of 3D-ish. Yeah, without having to do that. So this is our initial prototype. Didn't come out looking like we wanted it to. We did kind of the stretched out letter thing that you could kind of see sideways. It was all right, but the solder mask didn't have enough resolution and it was kind of not so great. The consistency wasn't there for what I wanted. Some of the more, just a few of the ideas that we came through, this was our second prototype. We decided to change and get rid of the bare board. So let's talk about keycaps. We planned this well, can you tell? So we had a keycap that we wanted and we liked. We liked to be able to remove the top and put different kinds of legends in. We really wanted that idea. We found a... And you had your idea for the DEF CON program. If you notice, you have your artwork in the program where you can tell them about it. So we wanted to be able to change it. So we made our own little legends that are in the program. If you see them, you can cut them out, use them if you want. Also, you can design your own, share them with us. I would love to see what you've come up with. I love to see other people's art. So we had a buyer, or not a buyer, we were the buyers. We had a distributor and we got to the point where he had sent us some examples. We were really happy with them.  Yeah, and we never heard from them again. So I don't know if we scared them or what happened, but that was about two months before the conference. So, yeah, we couldn't get them from anyone else. We contacted dozens of makers for keycaps and they either couldn't get them to us in time. Like November?  Or they wanted crazy amounts of money for them, like on the order of a dollar, a keycap. Just crazy amounts of money. So we did some quick math and decided that we could print them. Welcome to our army. So, yeah, we bought an army of resin printers and the last two months we have been printing every day for hours and hours. If you look in there, we've named them all. We have Seven, Kit, Steve, Kaylee. Kevin. Kevin. Dave, Jarvis.  Please, go deal with her. We also named our vats so that we knew which ones were acting up or not. So we named them after the seven dwarves, like Snow White and the seven dwarves. So we had several of them, I was like, what's seven? We can do, we can do dwarves. So that way we could keep them in track and know which one's being a jerk and which one needed a new film. And I learned so much more about printing than I ever thought. So, and we also, halfway, about a month into printing we decided we were gonna, he asked if we could add more. And because we were printing them we were able to add 3,000 more badges to our build. Otherwise we would not have been able to. Yep. So, this is Kevin. Yep, Kevin was the first printer and we learned a lot of things. What works, what doesn't. How to clean resin prints in mass. It's way different than trying to clean one at a time. By the way, the green stuff doesn't work. It turns a green. Yeah. So, yeah, that's our army. We actually have an eighth one.  Yeah, we, the screen broke on one of them last week and we were right at the end and we needed to push through a bunch more and Amazon could get us a screen in two days or another printer in one day. So, we got another printer and another screen and now we've got eight. So, this is what the keycaps kind of look like coming off the printer. So, this is our process. There's a lot of alcohol involved. Someone who doesn't drink, there was a lot of alcohol in my house. So, in the first vat, it's kind of milky or not vat bucket, I guess I would say. We would do our initial dunk, leave it there for like five minutes. We'd break them into the stirring bucket and give them another five minute wash. Make sure the flow was consistent. And we originally would let them dry from that point and then put them in water, put them in the curer and then lay them out to dry. Well, water takes a lot longer to dry. Also, if they weren't completely dry, the resume of the alcohol would turn foggy if we stuck them in water too soon, which is not what I wanted. We wanted a clearer thing. So, I one day was like, you know, alcohol's clear. So, I was like, hey, we could do this. So, we changed the third step into using the alcohol. We have a filter that would filter out all the cured pieces and we'd cure it in the alcohol and then it would dry faster on the last stage. We could put them in a bucket and click them together after that point. Yeah, sped it up quite a bit. A lot and, yeah. Didn't know we'd have to buy car parts. A lot. We'd buy, you know, big cases from Sam's Club. I think three gallons at a time and I don't know, probably about 10 or 12 cases, so. 30 gallons? Yeah, probably about 30 gallons. But, the next step. And there could have been a lot more. So, we created a device to separate the resin from the alcohol. It worked great. It does work. I did not expect said device would be so easy to make. So, yeah, we were able to reclaim about 75% of the alcohol that we used. Which saved a lot in cost. Yeah, a ton of money. And what's left in that afterwards is this gilled resin stuff. So, we'd scoop it out and put it out in the sun to dry and cure. That way it could be safely thrown away. But, there is a lot of waste with the resin. These parts are so small, resin sticks to them. And so, in the end, I think we used about 90 liters of resin to print our 50-some thousand keycaps. Yeah. Keycaps. How many was in there, did we say? I think 16,000 fit in one of those. 16,000. And we did 54,000. It's a lot. Thank you. So, we have three kids, and we kind of neglected them for the last four months. We're really good parents, can you tell? But, they were super supportive. We, they loved learning this process. They think it's the coolest thing. They're like, can we keep these printers so that they can print things as well? Yeah, they've been good little supporters. All right, so, these are the first panels we got from the assembly house. And then we started assembling them, and oh my gosh. Did you know 10,000 is a lot? Like 13,000 is a lot.  That's one of the boards, if any of you haven't seen the inside. Pictures have been circulating for a couple of weeks, but that's what the inside looks like. These little connectors on the side we had soldering issues with. They've got these little lips on the front that kind of hold them up straight, but the surface tension of the solder was pulling them off the edge of the board just a little bit, and so they would tip down. And, it was one of the things where we had already ordered all the boards, all the panels. So, we just went with it. They work, they're fine. They're just a little crooked, and it just. He's not OCD, it's fine. He's good. He doesn't have reflections. This was a fun one. The first panels we got. If you look at these little spring contacts here, these ones are taller than the ones on top. So, what had happened was they shipped them, and the panels are next to each other, and they squished against each other so hard that they permanently compressed those contacts. And that's a big problem, because those are what connects the top and bottom boards together. And the spring contacts are four millimeters tall. The space between the boards is 3.6 millimeters. So, any difference means they don't make contact. So, another thing that happened with having boards made that you don't realize is the panels warp when they get, when they go through the reflow oven. Especially because we're doing double-sided assembly, they warp a lot. And so, you can kind of see this curves up a little bit on this side. It's kind of a little bit of a potato chip, and that means more space on that side where those connectors are. And so, some of them just plain don't connect properly. So, yeah, there have been some issues with the touch slider on the side, not working quite right when connected to a computer. You can kind of squish the boards together a little, and that can help. But it's one of those things that didn't happen with the prototypes. Only once you start doing it in production, you find these things. We learned some things. And with only four months, we didn't have time to run a test run of a thousand or whatever. It was just make them all and go with it. So, so our assembly house, they came up with a really cheap, quick solution for the shipping problem. It was an amazing solution. So, we had talked about all kinds of trays and spacers and things we could use. In the end, they got these little rubber spacer dots and just put them on the corners in the center of the panels, and sandwiched them with a piece of cardboard, and it kept them away from each other, and it was perfect. It was fantastic. It was the exact same. They're everywhere at my house. They're fantastic. So, another thing with manufacturing, when you order parts from Digi-Key or whatever, they tell you how they're packaged. Are they on reels? Are they in bulk? Are they in trays? And trays can be kind of ambiguous. Are they in the nice plastic trays that go in pick and place machines, or are they just flimsy plastic trays that hold a thousand of them? And they ended up not being the nice trays. So, our assembly house, they CNC'd these little trays and then someone sat there and filled them all with USB connectors so that they could be put on by the pick and place machine. Thank you.  They weren't soldering properly for the first batch of panels. I apologize if your connectors fell off or broke off. Hopefully, HHV can help you out with that. On the left, they ran temperature profiler through their oven with thermocouples attached to every USB connector on the panel to make sure that they could get it dialed in and get them soldered properly. The other thing we ran into, the USB-C connector, on a few boards, these holes where the connector is supposed to stick through, they ended up filled up with solder mask. Yeah, just a really random thing and it was crazy. Granted, we used a very cheap board manufacturer because we needed them to be cheap, but these are the kind of things you run into with that. But they look so pretty coming off the line. Yeah, they do. All right, that's what 10,000 coin cells looks like. And that's 40,000 key switches. Welcome to my house. This is what it looked like for the last month. Yep. Oh man, so many late night splashing badges and separating panels. This was our first attempt to building through all those who were virtual. And so, yeah, we learned a lot that first couple nights. So we built these little test jigs which worked out really, really well. Just a little toggle clamp on top and a bunch of Pogo pins and they worked really, really well. We got little connectors on the side that when you press it down, they would go into the female connectors and test everything and it worked great. We ended up building six of them. This is Katie's soldering a bunch. And yeah, used them to flash 13,000 badges. We also used his hoard of a family. Yes. Because he's the oldest of eight. Yep, so I had lots of family come over and help and it was ridiculous. So, they came over so many weekends over the last month to help. It was amazing. So, yeah, so most of that was for the first 3,000 that went out to virtual people. After that, we had another 10,000 to build and they all showed up last week. Yep. Because of those connectors that didn't show up on time, they were six weeks late. We were supposed to have six weeks to assemble all of these. Instead, we had last weekend. Yeah. So, we got, we called in our St. Con friends and our DC801 friends. Got a space bigger than my house. Yep, and we just, however many badges you think 10,000 is, it's more. It's ridiculous. I'm pretty sure they kept having babies in boxes. So, it's like, I would empty a box and all of a sudden there was like 50 more and I was like, are you, oh no, words were had. Yeah, so many of everything.  By the way, this is what the inside of some of the badges looked like, if anyone's doing any challenge stuff. Yeah. So, putting in those little spacers was a pain in the butt. That took a day with like 15 people doing it. Just to put the plastic spacers in all of these. So, I made, they hurt your hands after a few. So, I made some little 3D printed presses that we could put them all in and then I ended up doing the same for the key switches because those were even worse. So, you can kind of see one there. Yeah, piles and piles of badges. There's me doing it. That's a better picture of the little press we used and yeah, I think we had a dozen of those going. So many helpers. In my rush, I did not ask for permission to use their photos. So, those are random faceless people. They are our wonderful helpers and we are grateful. We are so grateful to all of them. I showed up. So many people and so many badges. Oh man, thank you to everyone that helped us put these together. It would not have been possible without you helpers and those who came to our rescue. And especially everyone here. We had dozens of goons and other people helping us on Tuesday and Wednesday to finish up the last ones that showed up on Monday. So, it was a crazy rush to the end, but we got there. Me doing some coding and testing and everything. Is my son trying to play Simon on three boards and getting frustrated. He was a good tester. So, this happened yesterday. This is the biggest one I've seen so far. I think it was 20 or 21 people in a chain. It's awesome. Really awesome. Did it work? I heard they got up to four.  It's challenging. And if anyone gets longer, tag us on Twitter, the MK Factor. Yeah. Let us know how it goes. For any of you who haven't gone to the chill out area, they created this really awesome display. You can go plug your badge in and it will show you all the stats. What you've connected to, how many games you've played, what your scores were, all kinds of good stuff. So, I got set this picture last week. That is not a circuit board. Someone created this. I don't know what it's made out of, but it's impressive. So, yeah, someone created that. I think those connectors are even like... Yeah, they've got little side connectors made out of something. I don't know. They're painted. They're awesome. Whoever did this, I was impressed. So, and then there have been so many people hacking on it already. We've got people who have made generators for the virtual stuff. So, you guys all can connect your badges together, but the virtual people can't. And so, we created a way for them through the serial, USB to serial console to generate these strings of characters that they could pass back and forth to connect their badges over Discord or whatever other chat they're using. And people have already decoded it, figured out how it works, created their own generators to make fake connections and pass off things on their badges. And then a couple of people also made internet relays for their badges. So, you can connect your badge virtually through the internet to other badges. And it does it all. It's amazing. And someone even made a 3D printable like little stand for your desk so that it will not move around on your desk while you're using it. It's awesome. This was our last two, four months? Yeah. Yeah, lots of that. This is how we felt. And if you see us walking around the conference like this, you know why.  And it's awesome that it's done and we're so happy it's done. So, we hope you enjoy it. You can see why we selected them. Right, they just epitomized so much of the hacker spirit that we really wanna call attention to and celebrate. So, that was really, really cool. Hey, so we've got about eight minutes. So, we're happy to take any questions from the audience. Anybody's got one? Raise your hand. Okay, sir, I saw you first. Tell us a little bit more about the software you've got on there. Oh, and that we should remind them about the software updates. Yes. Yeah, and protocols. Yeah, so software, do you wanna know like features or? Yes, so. I mean, we just did it with Atmell Studio, ASUS Microchip Studio now. Use some of their frameworks to make it easier and so many challenges, mainly time. Trying to get all this stuff working in the short amount of time. Lack of sleep but a lot of issues. Well, like the protocol, like how did you decide how to inner badge communicate? Okay, so a lot of that was decided based on how easy it would be for me to code it and debug it.  And in the end, I decided one real crypto on a microcontroller is difficult to implement. And everyone's gonna dump the firmware and you'd have the keys anyway.  Right, you know, a little bit of obfuscation but people are gonna figure it out and there's a lot of joy in people figuring it out and hacking it and so that's what we did. So the question was, they both manufactured the resin keypads, is there a reason why they didn't just go with both keys from China? So the ones that we had chosen were very similar to this and we really, really wanted to be able to have them not just be a sticker on it because stickers leave residue, they get yucky. This way they could be protected. Your legends are a little nicer in there, right? And then by the printing of ourselves, we were able to put DEF CON on the keycaps which we kind of really loved. And if you overlook it like the goons or the presses, they have their names on them as well, same with the ubers, they have uber on them and things like that. So that was one of the other deciding factors we could personalize them. Oh, you're good, it's very hard to see. Hey, another question? I thought I saw other hands, other hands. Okay, over. Yeah? So they currently have, they had what, about 70 badges linked up. That is all, yeah. Tag us in it please, that's amazing. Did you guys play with what Simon says? Okay, last question. I think it's okay. Okay. So let's close out, talk about the firmware update. The firmware you've got, you mentioned. There's an update, but if you go to defcon.org slash signal, that is where all the updates and instructions will be. So if you ever want to do it now, you want to do it a week from now, defcon.org slash signal will be where the badge, software repository and updates are, right? Yep. Are there any updates coming or is what's there as current and... I don't know if it's been updated yet. I sent the defcon webmaster a new file, but I don't know if it's been updated. Yeah, so there's one that should be slated to be posted if it hasn't been already. Yeah, okay. And it will not reset your challenge status or anything like that to update firmware. Right on, well thank you very much. Like we mentioned, the Goon mentioned at the beginning, there's sort of a Q and A mix and mingle tonight at six. It's there. Oh, okay. Yeah. Awesome. We were just told it's there. Yeah, the file is the firmware, current firmware is on the slash signal is current. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you everyone for coming to the welcome and badge backstory talk. Look forward to seeing you around.


Every agency will have their own scope that they work within, but the standard that you would look at would be anything from 10% to 30%, 30% would be a little bit more for on the higher end being a luxury vellas that could reach from 7500 grand to 25000 grand per day, per day. And yeah, but the average understanding would be between a 10% and a 20% that the owner can expect from the income that would have been generated from a booking.