[Discuss-gnuradio] 2nd IEEE Signal Intelligence Challenge 2015: Final report

[Wunsch, Felix (CEL)]

Hi all,

I'm happy to forward the final report on this year's IEEE Signal Intelligence Challenge which we organized in Karlsruhe and Darmstadt in the past months!

-- Felix

FINAL REPORT:

After its debut in 2014, the 2^nd Signal Intelligence Challenge was organized by IEEE Student Branch Karlsruhe together with Secure Mobile Networking Lab of Technical University (TU) Darmstadt from April till June 2015.

Eleven teams from Karlsruhe and Darmstadt competed to solve a total of 25 different challenges in the fields of Spectral Analysis, Signal Intelligence and Cryptography in order to find flags which were e.g. hidden in a Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Signal of which the teams had no more a priori information than the band used for transmission. Software defined radios, such as USRPs and RTL-SDR dongles were used to receive the signals, while software such as Python, Matlab and GNU Radio was used for data analysis and post processing.

We were very happy to have so many participating student teams, many of them first-time SDR users and as they said, the challenge really got them into it! At the end of a very exciting competition, last year's winning team “FFT-Juchee” managed to defend their title (228/250 points), followed by the team “Die Aluhüte”, who climbed in a final effort of 24h hacking to 2^nd place (90/250 pts.), leaving the third team “CypherTank” (81/250 pts.) barely behind. We congratulate the winners! A video of the awards ceremony held at this year's “Gulasch Programmier Nacht” (GPN15) in Karlsruhe is available at: https://goo.gl/97j1WD

To conclude, the challenge was a great success, hopefully attracting the interest of many new students to the field of Software Defined Radios. Our great thanks go to the volunteers from ITI, SeeMoo, and CEL, who were involved in organizing the challenge, and especially to our sponsors, Ettus, the IEEE, and Rohde & Schwarz, who made the challenge very attractive by sponsoring superb prizes: a USRP B210, SDR-Sticks, books and beer! Without this support, such an event would not be possible.

We look forward to the 3^rd Signal Intelligence Challenge in 2016! Feel free to contact us, if you want to bring the challenge to your university!

(Author: Johannes Fink, Chair IEEE Student Branch Karlsruhe, address@hidden)

-- 
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Communications Engineering Lab (CEL)

Felix Wunsch, M. Sc.
Research Associate

Kaiserstraße 12
Building 05.01
76131 Karlsruhe

Phone: +49 721 608-46276
Fax: +49 721 608-46071
E-Mail: address@hidden

www.cel.kit.edu

KIT -- University of the State of Baden-Württemberg and
National Laboratory of the Helmholtz Association