BY ISABEL EVERETT
600 members of the public are on Thursday working to crack 12 real missing persons case, including that of Zac Barnes, who went missing in 2016 at 18-years-old, after he was last seen getting out of a car in Thornton.
As part of Australian Cyber Week, members of the public will be given six hours to source intelligence and potential leads that could help solve their cases.
The Hackathon is run by AustCyber, in partnership with the Australian Federal Police, National Missing Persons Coordination Centre and Trace Labs.
It is just the second year the event has run, with last years participants submitting 3,912 leads.
"The feedback we received from police over the last 12 months is that 40 pieces of information they submitted was absolutely brand new, that they hadn't uncovered during their investigations," says Australian cyber national network lead, Linda Cavanagh.
"But also the quality of the information and uniqueness of the submissions, such as drone footage, online revenue that was received by one of the missing persons, internet accounts and social media accounts that police were not aware of."
"We've had people spending an hour just looking frame by frame through a youtube clip, to see if there was any information they could use to be able to send to police, so its a dedicated resource just scraping the internet."
The ethical hackers consist of professionals working in the field of intelligence, students studying cyber security, law, arts, and members of cyber security teams at corporate organizations, aged from 18 years of age, to 83.
"Ten years ago we wouldn't of had the digital footprint that we do nowadays."
Ms Cavanagh says the program not only supports Australian Police, but the families of those who have gone missing.
"It's what they call ambiguous loss, they don't know what's happened and they actually say its one of the hardest grief and pain to go through."
"So the fact we're actually trying to bring together the community together to try and help resolve this is one of the benefits of today."
Clockwise: Katherine Ackling-Bryen; Gerardus Bakkenhoven; Renee Aitken; Elizabeth Barlow; Rhianna Barreau; Fredrick Bamboo; Zac Barnes; and Stephen Angel
