PNW Students Compete in Hackathon Indiana (“HackIN”) 2021 Competition

David Higley and Lucas D’Antonio, PNW Computer Information Technology majors, competed in the Hackathon Indiana (“HackIN”) 2021 Competition held October 9-10, in Carmel, Indiana. The PNW College of Technology team finished in fifth place out of 13 teams.

This event is designed to provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their embedded reverse-engineering talents. The competition was compromised of numerous information technology challenges. Each team received a microcontroller and an image of a computer. The premise was, someone had been maliciously modifying the code running on the microcontroller, and teams were given an image of the computer to try and figure out what was modified.

Teams were also required to extract and analyze the firmware from the microcontroller, as well as build multiple physical circuits on a breadboard that interacted with the microcontroller, in order to extract information needed to solve the challenges.

“It was definitely quite the challenge, and I’m happy we were able to get fifth as a team of two, while most other teams had more people. It was a very fun and educational experience!” said Higley.