Yes. I'm working on a pet project called F0UND that's meant to automate as much of the badge challenge as possible. There will still be a lot of human effort involved, but I think a lot of the information gathering and cross-referencing can be automated.

Next year the black badge will be mine, whatever it takes.

The winning team did a writeup on the event and how one of the sections they used automation to solve. I think it was a Vigenère cipher.