Photos: Hacking at Defcon

What self-respecting hacker convention would be without a "Computer Controlled Weapons Development" competition? It's called DefconBots, and the task is to create a computer-controlled gun that can track stationary targets and shoot them from 10 feet away.

For safety's sake, no metal projectiles were allowed. Instead, participants used plastic pellets and the like. Servo motors driven by a laptop controlled the gun. To penalize a shotgun approach, the contest rules included targets painted black that yielded negative points if they were hit.

Photo by Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com