DEF CON 33

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The RedTeam just got back from DEF CON 33, the world’s largest hacking conference, in Las Vegas earlier this August! We attended through the PSV, who graciously provided the RedTeam with tickets for the event.

At the con, everyone from the RedTeam helped host the “Saflok Exhibit”; a booth dedicated to demonstrating how to hack hotel locks, turning a guest key (or even just access to a single lock) into the master key for the whole facility.

In addition, Josh (a recent Michigan Tech alum) and Noah gave a DEF CON talk about hacking these locks, named “Hacking Hotel Locks; The Saflok Vulnerabilities Expanded”, which, according to the organizers, was one of the most popular Creator Stage talks! (The slides can be viewed here)

We also met many familiar faces! In the crowd, we spotted: Laurie Wired, a reverse-engineering expert from Google, John Hammond, a popular cybersecurity educator, Michael Goetzman, the host of many amazing conferences in the Midwest (such as CypherCon and SecretCon), and Deviant Ollam, the leading figure behind much of the modern Physical Security scene!

We also stumbled upon Jack Bergman and Stu Kernstock, previous RedTeam presidents that were in town for BlackHat, another cybersecurity conference.

Finally, near the end of our trip, we got a tour of the Red Team Alliance headquarters (located in Las Vegas) from Babak Javadi, where we also discussed our Saflok research as their trainings cover similar technologies.

With the school year now started, we’re gearing up for our K-Day demonstration! If you’re a student at Michigan Tech (or happen to be in the area), we highly recommend you swing by! We will have some free goodies and things you may find interesting ;)

SecretCon 3

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Just two months after CypherCon 8 in Milwaukee, the RedTeam from Michigan Tech hosted the Access Control Village at SecretCon 3 in St. Paul!

SecretCon, like CypherCon, is organized by Michael “Monster” Goetzman, a Midwesterner with years of experience in the security industry. There were many familiar faces from SecretCon’s of years past, as the RedTeam has attended every one since its inception.

This year, attendees got hands-on access to poke and prod at Physical Access Control Systems (PACS) through the RedTeam’s labs.

Participants ranged from Access Control Integrators who manage these products at a high-level but never understood how they operate at the low-level, to skilled hackers who have dabbled in digital security before, and all the way in-between.

Many thanks to Brian from BITS, who agreed to send the RedTeam very useful gear from Salto and other access control manufacturers so members could learn more about otherwise hard to come by systems!

With this conference behind us, we’re gearing up for our final conference before the 25–26 school year begins this fall: specifically DEF CON 33—the largest hacker conference in the world—this August! Be sure to swing by the PSV at DEF CON and say hi, and if you’re interested, don’t miss Noah and Josh’s DEF CON talk: Hacking Hotel Locks; The Saflok Vulnerabilities Expanded.

RedTeam@MTU Posts

DEF CON 33

SecretCon 3