WMG News
Can’t Stop, Must Hack!
A total of 50 students took part in the inaugural 24 hour hackathon on Saturday (20 June) to mark the start of a new partnership between WMG’s Cyber Security Centre and digital identification company Callsign.
Eight teams ‘hacked’ for 24 hours to produce a varied number of new applications for the Callsign platform. They are challenged with finding new ways to interact with the Internet of Things and given access to Callsign’s mobile app with the aim of improving the security and convenience of identity based transactions and activities.
Students from the University of Warwick’s departments of Computer Science, Maths, Economics, and Engineering worked on producing protypes and presentations for the judges to decide the overall winner. These included a replacement for a hotel room key, NHS remote customisation of data and remote care, a car share scheme, and an online website for buying and validating tickets.
The winning team was wysiwyg, who developed a peer to peer car share system. The car sharing app could allow your friends to use your car by checking their network to see which friends had a car they could borrow locally. Callsign would be used for multi factor, non-repudiable access to the vehicle, as well as assisting in remote access management. Team Authenticket were runners up with their ticket buying and validation website.
Judges for the event were Jon Pearson from Deutsche Bank, Max Kington from Morgan Stanley, Alex Mouzakitis from JLR, Dominic Storey from Cisco and Professor Carsten Maple, WMG. The judges were all impressed with the creative new ways the students developed to enhance everyday tasks in the time frame given.
Professor Carsten Maple said: “The talent that we have here at Warwick has been shown through the hackathon. Teams have worked hard to think about and produce applications that show they are ahead of the game when it comes to cyber security”
Dr. Zia Hayat, CEO and founder of Callsign commented “An excellent event that really showed off the quality and diversity of students’ skills at the University of Warwick as well as the numerous business and social opportunities Callsign creates. We are committed to research and development with partners and the wider cyber security community. This event was the first of many to come!”