Over the past weekend, 17 teams, in total, over 150 Lithuanian and foreign technology experts, amateurs and business representatives, gave their final presentations for jury evaluation at Hackathon Delta 1. The presented ideas were particularly versatile – not just scientific but also applicable for common users.
“It is very important to make sure the youth is engaged in such events – it trains your critical thinking and stimulates challenge-based problem-solving. We have noticed that the Hackathon proposals were highly original and innovative, and most importantly, responding to the requirement across different sectors. The participants were diligent with their homework: did the research on what data was publicly available, the possible solutions to the problems, and how they could be improved,” said one of DELTA1 Hackathon mentors, Head of KTU Artificial Intelligence Centre at Kaunas University of Technology Agnė Paulauskaitė-Tarasevičienė.
“We are particularly happy that the cooperation with Kaunas University of Technology is successfully continued despite all the challenges brought by the pandemic. The subject matter of cybersecurity this year was picked because of the necessity to organize events remotely, but equally importantly – because of its relevance. The teams have delivered results beyond all expections – the proposed solutions are constructive and applicable in real life,” said Jonas Skardinskas, head of the Ministry of National Defence Cyber Security and IT Policy Group.
J. Skardinskas stressed that such events were not only excellent platform for cooperation with the academic community, students, business, to the end of a shared goal – enhancement of the entire defence sector, but also it was expected that the ideas proposed, contacts established, and direct communication between the Armed Forces , business and academia would in the near future yield successful projects and products relevant not only to Lithuania but also to foreign countries.
Cyber security is more important than ever in the modern world: people are constantly faced with fake news, data theft, forms of hybrid warfare, and other processes that have a serious impact on the community. In order to accelerate innovation in cyber security, defence technology and communication, Hackathon Delta 1 was co-organized on November 12 – 14 by Kaunas university of Technology, Ministry of National Defence, and the Lithuanian Armed Forces , and awarded the total of 6 thousand Euro worth of prizes to the winners.
The main prize established by the Ministry of National Defence, EUR 2 thousand, was warade for a solution for real-time detection of false base stations (GSM/3G/LTE). As mobile networks are often vulnerable, the first place winner team proposed a ‘BandCatcher’ solution: the innovative technology allows detecting and monitoring unauthorized logins to mobile communication operator network.
The EUR 500 prize established by the Ministry of National Defence was awarded for the solution on unification and visualization disinformation networks; and on the condition that data privacy issue is resolved, EUR 1000 prize was given for the “SMS Shield” solution for detecting and filtering out spoofed SMS messages which are seen in more abundance recently.
EUR 1 thousand prize established by DELTA1 Hackathon partner, leader in digital security, Nord Security, was awarded to IT industry engineers who proposed a real-time pirate identification solution. It uses a special watermarked SDK library to identify piracy activities – illegal, copyright-breeching content re-broadcasting.
EUR 1 thousand prize and a trademark security kit established by ESET was awarded for an open data analysis tool which makes data analysis more efficient. It combines visual analysis and network analysis methods to process data in a better, more effective manner.
EUR 500 prize from a DELTA1 Hackathon partner, ESET cyber security solution and antivirus software designer company, was given for a solution that protects users who have just one login data combination for every purpose by using specific cookies to safe guard them against leakage into the Internet and use by malicious actors.
DELTA1 Hackathon seeks to pull together Lithuanian talent to create new technology solutions to modern military challenges. The event is co-organised by Kaunas University of Technology, Ministry of National Defence, Lithuanian Armed Forces. Partners: leader in digital security Nord Security, ESET cyber security solution and antivirus software company, TV3, Go3. https://delta1.lt/.
