CCI students create ‘Best Social Good’ hack

A team of ethical hackers from UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) was recognized for devising the “Best Social Good Hack” at HackNC, an event held in collaboration with competitions at eight locations around the globe and featuring as many as 10,000 student hackers.

CCI’s team tackled the human trafficking epidemic. As an urban area with the intersection of two major interstate highways within its limits, Charlotte is particularly vulnerable to illegal trafficking of all kinds, but the rise of human trafficking is particularly distressing.

Almost 100 cases of human trafficking are reported in Charlotte each year, which ranks the city eighth nationally. According to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 895 victim and survivor calls from North Carolina in 2017, double the number from 2012.

The CCI squad, featuring students Linh Pham, Herambh Yadavalli, Hansel Wei and Timothy Chacko, employed machine learning and natural language processing to recognize keywords and emojis commonly used by predators to target, lure and share information about victims.

Camouflaged terms, text and even emojis are regularly changed by predators; the CCI team hopes to establish a database where commonly used language and emojis will establish a forensic blueprint of how predators operate to help law enforcement better predict, prevent and prosecute cases.

The award for “Best Social Good Hack” was sponsored by Fidelity Labs, and team members received Visa gift cards.