Hansken Hackathon at HSD Campus Puts Innovation Into Practice

On 29 November and 1 December, the second Hansken Hackathon took place at the HSD Campus. The hackathon was initiated by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) and Leiden University of Applied Sciences. The participants came from diverse backgrounds and were able to develop new ideas and achieve great results.  

Innovation in practice

The Hansken platform and the Hansken Hackathon bring people and knowledge together in various ways. With participants from the National Police, FIOD, NFI and students and teachers from Leiden University of Applied Sciences, there was a diverse group of people from the fields of science, digital expertise and tactics. The participants were divided into teams to work on a number of interesting plug-ins. They could immediately work on targeted solutions as it became clear what is essential in case investigations.

This Hackathon focused on the theme of Artificial Intelligence (AI). An AI workshop took place at the NFI in June 2022, which was attended by several Hansken users and produced an interesting top five ideas. These ideas were pitched during this new Hackathon to potentially put them into practice.

Projects worked on and Hansken SDK 

Several ideas were taken up and worked on. For example: are images that pop up in a case edited or not? And how do you include that in Hansken? Or: how to search audio files better? A team was set to work on converting audio into text to make it searchable. To make this work well in Hansken, for example, an audio plugin is being developed based on the latest AI models. And: for your research, how do you quickly extract data from a cryptowallet? Time is often crucial in research, which is why Hansken wants to be able to quickly extract data from cryptowallets, for instance.

New Hansken facilities were also introduced to the participants. In September, the Hansken Software Development Kit (SDK) was launched. The SDK is a powerful tool that allows Hansken partners to build their own plugins which can be used for research. These plugins can then be shared in the community, thus enriching the Hansken platform. The SDK was well used during this Hackathon and has also been optimised again due to the new experiences.

Outcome and upcoming Hansken Hackathon

Several new ideas have been developed since the Hackathon. Ranging from two plugins that are almost ready for use in Hansken to insights that certain issues need to be looked at differently. It was a successful hackathon where knowledge has been shared with Hansken partners. For more information about the Hansken Hackathon visit www.hansken.nl.

About Hansken

Hansken is designed to give access to and insight in digital data and traces originating from seized and demanded material. Since 2012, the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) has been developing a prototype to provide Digital Forensics as a Service (DFaaS). In recent years, parts of this platform have been rolled out and successfully applied at the Dutch National Police and the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, amongst others.

More info about the Hansken platform >