KOCHI: The increasing use of smartphones and advanced communication technologies have been linked to a spurt in cyber crimes, especially those involving the sexual exploitation of children. Taking note of the need for modern solutions to weed out culprits in cases involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM), Kerala Police organised a hackathon in the run up to the cOcOn 2025 cybersecurity conference, which led to the creation of two products — ‘Trace an Object’ and ‘Take it Down’, which together are first-of-their-kind solutions developed by a police department in the country.
Speaking to TNIE, Ankit Asokan, superintendent of police for cyber operations, said, “Since 2015, we have cracked more than 350 CSAM cases and confiscated over 2,000 devices. With the advancement of technology, law-enforcement agencies also need to have the tools to crack such cases.
The ‘Trace an Object’ and ‘Take it Down’ services will add teeth to the victim identification task force of the state police. We are the only law-enforcement agency in the country to have developed such solutions to fight child sexual abuse material.”
According to Adarsh Nair, commander (honorary rank), Kerala Police Cyberdome, “Every team worked on developing the solutions. Even the awards reflect this. We recognised teams that were the most creative. Then there was an award for the most unconventional approach taken to develop them.”
Explaining the solutions, he said, “Take It Down allows people to safely report child sexual abuse material online while protecting victims’ privacy. Instead of sharing the actual content, the system creates a unique digital code, known as a hash. This code is then shared with major platforms like Meta, TikTok, etc. If the same content appears again, these platforms can quickly remove it — stopping the spread of harmful content without ever exposing the original material.”
While ‘Take it Down’ helps remove abusive content, ‘Trace An Object’ works by finding important clues in the child abuse material, he said. “It uses public support to help investigators find important clues. Instead of showing the harmful content, the tool — with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — picks out small details like a chair, a toy, or wallpaper pattern. These snippets are then shared with the public, who may recognise a location or link it to a victim. This way, investigators get valuable leads while the abusive material itself remains private,” Adarsh said.
At present, the solutions are in the prototype stage, he added. “However, it should be understood that the core concept and methodology of the products have been developed. The only thing remaining is security testing, developing the infrastructure, and analysing its scalability,” he said.
According to Peter Pilley of Kindred Tech, a New Zealand-based registered charity dedicated to combating online harm and child exploitation, the participants of the hackathon had done a swell job. “They created two high-end solutions in four days that would have taken a tech company one year to develop,” Peter said. Meanwhile, state police have set in motion plans for latest versions of the solutions.