Real-Time Pinball Telemetry Drives First-Ever Pinball Hackers Black Badge Challenge
This August, VanishID returned to DEF CON 33 for our second year supporting the Pinball High Score Contest—but this time, we helped make hacker history. As a proud sponsor and supporter of Pinball Hackers, our team engineered the Real-Time Pinball Telemetry (RTPT) system that powered DEF CON’s first-ever Pinball Black Badge Challenge, one of the conference’s most prestigious honors.
From Sponsorship to Technical Innovation
What began as community support evolved into an ambitious engineering challenge. Led by Michael Hans, our team including Alex Mulfinger created something hands-on hackable: a comprehensive telemetry system that captured every nudge, tilt, and game state across multiple pinball machines throughout the competition.
The challenge drew inspiration from hacker history, films, and DEF CON 33’s theme. Our dashboard became the nerve center of the competition, providing real-time insights into CTF team behavior and challenge progression.
Plus, all of our custom sensors made it through airport security without a hitch—a small victory that any hardware engineer can appreciate.
Elite Performance Under Pressure
The results were impressive: two elite solvers, Polybius801 and Redfrend, completed the Challenge in just 29.5 hours, a testament to both the challenge’s design and the caliber of DEF CON’s problem solvers. Three additional teams (Flubby, Whopper, and Pickebackpinballers) also successfully solved the challenge, with many more participants earning commemorative challenge coins.
By the Numbers: What Our Telemetry Revealed
Our RTPT system captured unprecedented data across the entire competition:
Challenge Statistics:
- 9,357 nudge sequence attempts recorded
- John Wick dominated with 39% of all nudges
- Deadpool registered the hardest measured nudge of the competition
Player Behavior Patterns:
- Left nudges: 39.2%
- Forward nudges: 39.0%
- Right nudges: 21.8%
Game State Tracking:
- “GAME OVER” triggered 461 times—the most common sequence
- “WarGames” sequence: 117 matches
- “KICKS” sequence: 114 matches
- “95 31337” sequence: 100 matches
Community Impact and Technical Achievement
As sponsors of the Pinball Hackers community, we provided both technical innovation and financial support, enabling this groundbreaking challenge to become a reality. Our sensors successfully navigated airport security, integrated seamlessly with existing pinball hardware, and provided actionable insights in real-time.
The project showcased the intersection of security expertise, hardware innovation, and community engagement that defines both VanishID’s mission and the DEF CON spirit. Through our sponsorship of Pinball Hackers, we enabled a unique fusion of competitive gaming and technical challenge that brought new insights to pinball competition analytics. From nudge pattern analysis to CTF game state monitoring, our technology proved its versatility in an environment where precision matters and failure isn’t an option.
From digital executive protection to pinball telemetry, our team loves a challenge.
About VanishID
VanishID is an agentic AI-powered company that neutralizes public data exposure for organizations and their employees. By continuously monitoring and reducing exposure to open-source intelligence (OSINT), VanishID extends security beyond the corporate perimeter, safeguarding business continuity and organizational integrity.