Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NiElit), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), launched Cyber Kushti on August 15, a national cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) hackathon designed to test and recognise human judgment in cybersecurity assessment.
The hackathon is the official parallel technical track of the 3rd National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence (NCCDFI 2026). The competition is being conducted in collaboration with the Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC Foundation) under the National Security Database (NSD), with CERT-In as the knowledge partner.
Registration for Cyber Kushti 2026 opened on August 15, and will remain open until September 10. Participation is free and open to students and independent researchers in teams of three.
Unlike conventional cybersecurity competitions that primarily focus on vulnerability discovery or Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges, Cyber Kushti 2026 is designed to assess the ability of participants to evaluate, prioritise and defend cybersecurity decisions.
Each participating team will receive an identical and deliberately imperfect Security Assessment Package, comprising AI-generated findings, static analysis outputs, dependency and secrets scans, architecture documentation, source code and application logs.
The package will contain false, duplicated and genuine findings, while some actual vulnerabilities will be deliberately omitted. Teams will be required to produce a corrected and prioritised security assessment and defend the decisions made. The competition will reward participants not only for identifying genuine issues but also for correctly rejecting false findings.
Since the same tool-generated material will be provided to every team simultaneously, the format is designed to minimise the advantage of expensive security tools. Participants will also be free to use any artificial intelligence tools of their choice.
Cyber Kushti 2026 will be conducted in three progressive rounds:
Round 1 – The Akhada: Online round on September 15, from which 50 teams will advance.
Round 2 – The Dangal: Online round on September 24, from which 10 finalist teams will be selected.
Final Round – The Kesari: To be held in person on October 9 at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi, where the ten finalist teams will work under supervision before presenting and defending their assessments on the main stage of NCCDFI 2026.
During the final round, an automated analysis of the same assessment material will be displayed alongside the teams’ presentations. This will allow delegates to observe where machine-generated analysis and expert human judgment converge and where they differ.
The winning team will be awarded the title “Cyber Kesari 2026” and presented the traditional Gada. The runners-up will be recognised with the titles “Rustam” and “Pahalwan.”