by Angela Guess

According to a new press release, “A team from Georgia has won the MITRE Unique Identification of Things (IoT) Challenge. Team 0xDEADBEEF, led by Duncan Thompson, won $50,000 by posting the highest score in the competition. The two runner up teams are: Pulzze Systems, a start-up company from Silicon Valley, and Tietronix, a small company located in Houston. Both work in the IoT field. MITRE created the IoT Challenge, which attracted 130 teams worldwide, to identify innovative ideas for addressing a key security issue inherent in IoT networks — identifying the devices on the network and knowing when changes occur. Our goal is to help government agencies, industry, and individuals reap the benefits of the IoT technological evolution — while minimizing the risks. The MITRE IoT Challenge launched in October and ended on January 16.”

The release goes on, “Schwefler led a team of MITRE subject matter experts and interns to create the core of the Challenge, setting up a model home network that included a large number of IoT devices, such as door locks, thermostats, and lighting controls. They re-created a home setting because of the wide availability of affordable devices and because a solution that works in the home could be adapted to other network environments, such as a hospital or military facility. Each registered team was given access to radio frequency (RF) capture data from the model home network. The first recording was a baseline RF capture of the environment. The second recording was a “challenge” RF recording in which IoT devices were added, removed, or modified. Each team needed to answer a series of questions about the baseline and challenge recordings, which allowed MITRE to assess the team’s ability to uniquely identify devices.”

Read more at Marketwired.

Photo credit: MITRE