Kochi : Final year students of Amrita University emerged winners at ethical hacking competition organised by Kerala Police as part of its “COCON 2022” - an international cybersecurity, data protection and hacking conference held annually. The first prize that comes with rupees one lakh went to Aditya Suresh Kumar and M Rohith Narayanan, from Red Chillies, who competed with 75 other teams to clinch first position.
The runners-up in second position were PC Prajwal - Akhil Menon team followed by K Aditya and Nabil Nvab team.
The competition was conducted by Begle - a startup of Kerala Police’s Cyber Dome and Cyber Security centre.
Participating teams were required hack in 25 hours time, a dummy company set up for the competition, meaning network the teams would potentially crash does not belong to an actual entity. A total of 50 teams qualified for “Capture the flag” event for the competition.
If network of real banks or companies are hacked into, the result could drastic including a potential shutdown at least temporarily.
The competition aims to come upon talents who would be trained in ‘ethical hacking’ - a method to detect and trace illegal hackers of networks.
Typically, hackers look up for holes in company networks systems and crawl their way inside to spy, manipulate or destroy the system. Ethical hacking aims to come upon these holes in advance and warn the concerned company about the danger, so they eventually plug them, said Beagle Securities Director Raja Raheem.
