The second edition of the hackathon, aptly titled “SAINYA RANAKSHETRAM 2.0,” was organised by the Indian Army under the auspices of HQ Army Training Command (ARTRAC) from October 2022 to January 2023 with the goal of finding solutions to operational cyber challenges and accelerating the development of novel solutions in the area of cyber security. On January 17, 2023, Gen. Manoj Pande, Chief of the Army Staff, presented awards to the victors of the competition.
The purpose of the event was to provide a venue for the discovery of local talent in specialised fields and to raise the bar for training in the fields of cyber deterrence, security software coding, electro magnetic spectrum operations (EMSO), and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).The participation was open to all Indian citizens and participation permitted in an individual / team manner. Thus to meet this end state, the Cyber Threat Seminar cum Workshop was held under four sub-events which included following activities:-
Secure Software Coding –
Its goal was to collaborate with academics in the area of software programme security and to find individuals qualified to write software with cyber security standards in mind. The winner in this category is Mr. Aravindha Hariharan M. from Coimbatore, a cyber security enthusiast with a variety of qualifications.
ESMO: Customised Indian Army Specific Stack for Wi-Fi 6 –
This sub-goal event’s was to find a way to create a Secure Wi-Fi stack tailored to the Indian Army in order to raise security levels. The winner in this category is Colonel Nishant Rathee, Commandant, Army HQ Computer Center. Mr. Suryasaradhi Balarkan, who is currently employed at L&T, came in second, while Ms. Tanisha Joshi, who is presently pursuing a Ph. D. in Dark Energy, came in third.
Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning: NLP Processing and Decoding of Radio Intercepts –
The creation of an Al stack for dealing with the translation and decryption of multilingual radio signals was made possible by this sub-event. The winner of this category is Master Mithil Salunkhe, a 15-year-old Gyan Mata Vidya Vihar student in Nanded, Maharashtra. The second-place finisher was Mr. Prashant Kumar Singh, a B Tech (CS) graduate of the Punjab Technical University who is now pursuing a B Sc (Data Science) degree at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. The third-place finisher was Cdr. Sushant Sarswat, a naval officer who is currently assigned to the HQ Eastern Naval Command.
Cyber Deterrence: Capture the Flag (CTF) –
This seven-stage cyber security exploitation challenge was designed to find talented individuals who could improve the current cyber security setup. Mr. Shaksham Jaiswal, a BE (CS) from Hyderabad’s MVSR Engineering College, was the challenge’s victor.
He currently works as a freelancer and possesses more than 15 essential credentials in the industry. Mr. Prince Kumar Patel, a BE (IT) student at Army Institute of Technology (AIT), Pune, earned the second award, and Mr. Hardeep Singh, a BCA student at Maharaja Ganga Singh University in Bikaner, won third place.
The Cyber Threat Seminar/Workshop has encouraged interaction with the inherent talent at levels of individuals, academics, and organisations, resulting to the identification of relevant talent in the area of cyber security both within the Defense forces and in the civil academy. The discovered talent can then be employed to participate in concentrated work that hastens the development of cyber security tools and methods.
