Wrapping up Digital Defence Hackathon 2020

Organisations of all sizes and across all industries face a vast array of challenges around securing the critical data that underpins the way they operate. It’s key for these organisations to protect, open up, and to do more with data. Our goal is to support citizen data scientists, and bring together Cloud technologies in creative and innovative ways to solve some of the key problems being faced.
The Digital Defence Hackathon was a single-event hackathon centred around the application of best practice data science and AI processes, to address cyber security threats. This hackathon was aimed at utilising data science and AI to gain meaningful and actionable insights as nations emerged from lockdowns and stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19.
This year we partnered with Oracle, K-tech, IBM, ITIC Systems, NASSCOM CoE, Cyber Security Centre of Excellence and AustCyber as our major sponsors and Public Sector Network, Slack, Black Nova Group, Yirigaa, UNSW DataSoc, SLASSCOM, DataCated Academy and AlEthics4all as our community partners.
The hackathon revolved around the following topics:
Anomaly Detection
Deepfakes
Cybersecurity

There were more than 2000+ participants and 100+ mentors and industry professionals coming from more than 70 countries. Together, they formed over 20+ teams.
The hackathon was supported by globally celebrated panelists, speakers, judges and mentors including:
Hon. Victor Dominello- Minister for Digital, Minister for Customer Service, NSW Government & Member of Ryde
Guillermo Ruiz- Head of DevRel, Oracle
Chris Hockings- Regional CTO, IBM Security
Prerana Mehta- Chief of Ecosystem Development, AustCyber
Dr Gopichand Katragadda- CEO & Founder , Myelin Foundry
Warren Mundine- Chairman, Yirigaa
Dr. lan Opperman- Chief Data Scientist, Government of New South Wales
Tim Watts- Shadow Assistant Minister, Cyber Security and Communications, Australian Parliament House
Christopher G. Chelliah- SVP, Strategic Business Development, Oracle JAPACI
Stephen Elbourn- Managing Director, ITIC Systems
Gavin Whyte- Chief Al Officer, Public Sector Network
Rama Vedashree- CEO, Data Science Council of India
Dr. Sriram Birudavolu- CEO, Cyber Security Centre of Excellence
Srini Srinivasan- Regional Managing Director, Project Management Institute
Steve Nouri- Head of Data Science & AI, Australian Computer Society
The opening ceremony for the Event was broadcasted live on 20th November 2020:
After weeks of judging hundreds of innovative and creative solutions, our judges have finally come up with the best solutions presented in the hackathon.
The winners of the hackathons are as follows:
5th Place Holder : Team TARDIS
Team Members: Arya Anghan, David Sarkies, Mohammed
Ilyas Ahmed, Ritu Kurnari, Szabolcs (Szasza) Palmer
Solution: Utilising incron/inotify, we implemented a Python-based solution using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure which:
* Detects when a file is uploaded
* Registers the uploader's IP address
* Checks the IBM X-Force Exchange database via its API for a matching IP address and a file hash
* If either the IP address or the file content hash is malicious, the uploaded file gets deleted
* Does all the above real-time, the verification happens within a couple of milliseconds from the upload
Click Here to watch their Submission!
4th Place Holder: Team DineDetect
Tearn Members: Jainish Shah, Revathy Sivaraman, Hanifa Baporia
Mentors: Jyotirmaya Patro, Jason Lowe, and Lyn Ward
Solution: We are using Clustering technique to detect the customer demographic information, such as location, account number and phone number. Based on that, we are marking the customers as either a fraudulent customer or non-fraudulent customer.
We are showing our analysis in the form of a dashboard.
Click Here to watch their Submission!
3rd Place Holder: Team Identity Crisis
Team Members: Suchet Singh, Deepit Amin, Astha Chauhan, Atuf Abdul Khader, Shea Mithala Parambath, Khan Nomaan
Mentors: Riyaz Ahamed
Solution: We used an encoded pixel based area within which our face is being recognised, focused on the eye and lip region. This makes use of the machine learning training model, as it is able to recognise and detect whether the image is real or fake.
Click Here to watch their Submission!
2nd Place Holder: Team The Seekers
Team Members: Joey Yuen, William Tin, Nauman Akram, Thulasiram Nagam, Ali Haider, Muhammad kafeel, Maria Sheikh, Rabi
Mentor: Riyaz Ahamed
Solution: Focusing on private networks where you want to apply your own solutions of finding anomalous traffic.
Click Here to watch their Submission!
Winners of the Digital Defence Hackathon 2020: Team Black Cap
Team Members: Tarek Chaalan, Imad Mehmood, Andleeb, Robert Dzudzar, Neda AfzaliSeresht, Khai Fahmi Zaki, Asif Rasool
Mentors: Riyaz Ahamed
Solution: We were able to locate and analyse multiple anomalies within the provided business. Anomalies that we found include suspicious large transactions with over $90K, self-self transactions, circular transactions, unusual amounts of money spent on meals and people having double accounts. Utilising Python, NEO4J, Graphistry and Tableau we were able to show this anomalous transaction visually, by creating network graphs and interactive visualisations. With these tools, we have been able to successfully locate Anomalies.
Click Here to watch their Submission!
The Awards Ceremony was broadcasted live on 6th December 2020 on:
A huge thanks to all the participants, mentors, ambassadors, sponsors and partners for being a crucial part of this hackathon, for providing both positive and constructive feedback and making this event a reality!