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What is the National Missing Persons Hackathon?
The event will see the gathering of ethical hackers and investigators using online investigative techniques within the bounds of the law to find new leads on real missing persons cases in Australia.
Contestants will be using their cyber skills to gather open source intelligence (OSINT) on long-term missing persons who have been missing for three months or more using only information that is publicly available on the internet. The goal of this is to generate new leads on cases that can provide assistance to the relevant Australian policing jurisdictions in their investigations.
The event has been modelled against 20 successful missing persons hackathons run by the not-for-profit organisation Trace Labs in partnership with various security conferences, universities, and community organisations within the USA, Canada, UK, and Australia.
This is the first ‘large scale’ crowdsourced open source intelligence gathering of its kind in Australia for missing persons.
How does it work?
The CTF will run for a duration of 6 hours and physical attendance is required at the participating locations across Australia. The main event will be in the ACT with the event live streamed across several platforms for simultaneous participation at nominated locations and for public viewing.
Twelve missing persons will be selected from existing National Missing Person Coordination Centre cases for participants to collect OSINT on, and to generate new leads.
Points will be awarded to contestants for each piece of OSINT information submitted (flag) on any of the missing persons that falls into any of the eligible categories. The flag will be validated by judges prior to points being awarded.
The top 3 individual/teams who are awarded the most points will receive a National Hackathon prize.
All leads generated on the missing person cases will be handed to the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre and further distributed to State and Territory Missing Persons Units for investigation.
Where is it being held?
The main event will be hosted in the ACT with a live stream to other State/Territory locations:
•Adelaide
•Brisbane
•Canberra
•Darwin
•Gold Coast
•Hobart
•Melbourne
•Perth
•Sunshine Coast
•Sydney
•Wollongong
If you know anything that could help the search contact Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report online.
