Full Disclosure, Full Color: Story of This Year's BBV Badge
Takes a behind-the-scenes look at designing and manufacturing the Bug Bounty Village electronic badge, combining multi-layer PCBs and interactive CTF puzzles.
Summary
Engineering Electronic Conference Badges
Creating custom electronic conference badges requires integrating artistic circuit board design, embedded firmware programming, and interactive puzzle engineering within strict manufacturing constraints.
PCB Art and Multi-Layer Fabrication
The Bug Bounty Village badge utilizes intricate silkscreen art, exposed copper planes, and specialized solder mask layering to create multi-color visual aesthetics alongside high-density LED matrix displays.
Embedded Hardware Architecture
The badge architecture incorporates low-power microcontrollers, interactive capacitive touch pads, and power management circuits designed to run for days on standard battery packs while powering dynamic visual effects.
Integrating CTF Puzzles and Firmware Challenges
Embedded into the badge firmware is a standalone Capture the Flag (CTF) challenge, allowing conference attendees to reverse engineer communication protocols and extract hidden puzzle flags directly from hardware interfaces.
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