Kolkata police on Friday organised their first Hackathon — a competition to select 10 teams of “cyber experts” who would in future assist the police in solving cyber crimes.
Hackathons, in their early days, were used mainly during recruitment drives. But they have gradually expanded their utility from building a brand to advocating social causes.
Kolkata police commissioner Vineet Goyal on Friday said there was a need for such events to select cyber enthusiasts who could help the law enforcement agencies to tackle cyber crimes.
“Cases of bank frauds, identity theft, phishing, cyberscape extortion and data theft are affecting individuals. Crimes involving ransomware, malware, the dark web, and cryptocurrency are affecting everyone. It is an enormous challenge to keep up with these developments and new modes of crime. Cyber attacks are becoming dynamic and sophisticated,” said Goyal.
“The need of the hour is that all stakeholders have to work together. No single organisation has the resource or expertise to combat this advanced nature of cyber crimes that are being committed,” he added.
More than 400 persons including students, cyber professionals and cyber enthusiasts aged between 20 and 35 years participated in the seven-hour hackathon at the Netaji Indoor Stadium that started on Friday morning.
The participants were given a series of cyber hurdles related to solving cases of ransomware attacks, cyber forensics, and misuse of the dark web, out of which the top ten teams were selected for an internship with the Kolkata police. The first three teams got cash rewards.
Senior officers of Kolkata police said there were plans to organise several editions of Hackathon to encourage cyber enthusiasts and prepare a pool of experts who could be referred to in cybercrime cases.
Sanghamitra Banerjee, director, Indian Statistical Institute; Partha Pratim Chakraborty, computer science and engineering professor at the Centre of excellence in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at IIT Kharagpur; Ujjwal Maulik, professor, department of computer science, Jadavpur University; Hrithik Lall, chief technical officer, IEM Labs, were present at the event.
Facebook is a prime example of a company leveraging the power of hackathons. What began as an informal brainstorming session between Mark Zuckerberg and his team in Facebook’s formative years has now become an annual ritual of sorts. Several ideas from hackathons have gone live. The like button is one such example.
Hundreds of thousands of cases of cyber crime are reported to Kolkata police every year, many of which are not formally lodged in the form of an FIR, police said.
In 2021, more than 2,500 complaints of online fraud were reported to the Kolkata police.