The 2019 event collected the largest number of leads from a single event in Trace Labs history
The National Missing Persons Hackathon, held on Friday 11 October as part of Australian Cyber Week 2019, saw 354 participants across Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth come together to generate 3,912 leads for 12 national missing person cases for Australian police /
PARTICIPANTS GENERATED A VARIETY OF LEADS
Drone footage of an area where one of the subjects went missing from /
Multiple aliases of missing persons uncovered, along with secondary social media accounts /
Investigation into revenue streams for missing persons, including a website operated by one of the subjects that generated ad revenue /
License plate numbers for vehicles /
Secret email addresses /
Travel agency accounts such as TripFinder /
"This is where innovation brings social value, creating an event which is unlike any other hackathon or capture the flag (CTF) challenge. Theoretical concepts are put aside so participants can operate in real time, with real (open source) data for real human impact."
"By involving the community, and in this case hackers, into the search for missing persons, we hope to solve more long-term missing person cases in a way that police could not do alone."
"Our goal is to partner with law enforcement and organisations like AustCyber on crowdsourced intelligence initiatives to enhance public safety around the world and enable the community to be involved in tackling complex social issues"
Some of the information generated by participants was new and not identified originally by the investigating police
