Teams from Amrita College of Engineering (Bengaluru), the Indian Institute of Technology (Hyderabad), and the Indian Institute of Technology (Mumbai) were announced as the winners of the recently concluded national college hacking contest, Build The Shield, respectively. A first-of-its-kind national level college hacking contest hosted by Microsoft, the contest provides students a competitive hands-on hacking experience coupled with real-life scenarios, wherein the team defend and attack competitors’ servers to emerge as the winner.
1st Position: The Flying Dutchman – Amrita College of Engineering, Bengaluru
Anirudh Rayabharam
Sheik Al Farhan
V V Bhaskaram
Sandilya Jandhyala
2nd Position: 117# – Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Agam Agarwal
Ajay Brahmakshatriya
Samrat Phatale
Sanyam Kapoor
3rd Position: Null Session – Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Abhinav Gupta
Dheerendra Rathor
Ranveer Aggarwal
Aman Gour
This year, more than 290 teams and 1000+ students participated in the online qualifiers stage in January 2015. Of these, 50 teams were shortlisted for the national finale at Hyderabad, who battled for the top three positions. Winners of the grand finale received pre-placement offers from Microsoft to pursue an exciting career with the company, along with other exciting goodies like Xbox One.
Speaking on the contest’s success, Suvabrata Sinha, Principal Security Manager, Microsoft IT India said, “The passion and enthusiasm shown by the students in this contest has been overwhelming, and we are delighted by the response to this year’s contest that witnessed a 47% increase in participation from last year. I congratulate the teams on emerging as the winners in this year’s Build the Shield. Microsoft is committed to not only providing a great set of features and user experience to its customers, but also to building the best-in-class robust security systems using its cutting edge technologies. This competition is an endeavor to offer opportunities to students to acquire skills and exposure to the brightest future security professionals in a fun-filled learning environment.”
Build The Shield contest is an effort by Microsoft to share its passion with young talent to develop and implement solutions that help protect against increasingly complex security threats. As part of the contest, an online learning session was conducted on software security for participants selected for grand finale by the Microsoft IT India Security Team. The contest also gave an opportunity for participants to meet students from different colleges, compete with challenging teams and brainstorm to fight the security battle alongside a tour of the Microsoft campus at Hyderabad.