Sanat Sharma, a second year undergraduate student of Computer Science at BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus is declared the winner of the Global ‘Capture The Flag’ Cyber Challenge in the recently concluded Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS 2017) that was held at JW Marriott, New Delhi during November 20-21, 2017. The award and certificate were presented by the Honorable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi Ji.

Global Cyber Challenge is an important part of Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS), 2017, which was attended by participants from nearly 120 countries. Global Cyber Challenge comprises of two contests namely Capture the Flag Event and Peace-a-thon. The contest was open to participants from India and abroad. The participation could take place in either or both the contests.

The Qualifiers were held on Nov 14, 2017- Nov 15, 2017 where Sanat Sharma’s team stood first overall. Top 5 Indian teams and top 3 international teams were invited to participate in the onsite finals. Sanat Sharma’s team was placed in the international category because his teammate, Aaditya Purani a student of Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, USA had participated from abroad.

The qualifiers were organized by a team from IIT Kanpur. The finals were organized by National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) where Sanat Sharma and his teammate Aaditya Purani were asked to penetrate a special network designed by the organizers. Points were given based on the number of flags they had captured by hacking into machines, reversing weird file formats and uncovering text hidden in images (steganography). They had participated as “dcua” and again were declared winner in the onsite finals of the Capture-the-flag (CTF) round.

Apart from awards and certificates, the winners will get an Internship opportunity with Government of India and the chance to deploy the solutions at Government of India, State Governments, Civil Society Organizations working to address the social problems with the help in the form of mentorship from Internet and Mobile Association of India.