IIIT Bengaluru students secure top two positions in CyberShield Hackathon

International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. | Photo Credit: File photo A team of students studying M. Tech at International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-Bangalore) earned the top two positions in the CyberShield Hackathon, organised by IIT Hyderabad in collaboration with Bank of India. Close to 3,000 teams from universities across India participated in the event.Chandrahas Reddy, Sarthak Maheshwari, Harsh Mohta, and Arismita Mukherjee secured first place for one their projects and were awarded ₹5 lakh. They took the second place for another project winning ₹3 lakh.The hackathon challenged participants to develop technology-driven solutions to emerging cybersecurity and financial fraud challenges. While the first problem statement focused on strengthening the identification and analysis of fraudulent mobile applications and malware, the second addressed the growing challenge of detecting mule accounts and evolving patterns of financial fraud.Sarthak Maheshwari said, “In the first project, we built a Generative AI-powered solution for identifying fraudulent mobile applications and malware. The system helps faster identification of malicious behaviour and associated risks from the apps. Seeing our solution recognised as the winning entry was a proud moment for the entire team and a meaningful validation.”Speaking about the second project, Arismita Mukherjee said, “We were challenged to develop solutions to identify mule accounts and respond to the changing nature of financial fraud. The team developed an AI/ML-based solution to detect mule accounts by combining regulatory and cross-channel banking data with feedback from human analysts, allowing the model to continuously adapt to evolving fraud patterns.” Published - September 04, 2026 12:31 pm IST