Read before you compete

Rules & guidelines

Everything below applies to all three parts unless a specific round says otherwise.

Eligibility

Team Size and Formation

Team size limits are set per part and enforced at registration.
A participant may belong to only one team per part.
Cross-college teams are permitted.
One substitution is allowed between parts, by email, before that part's deadline.

Registration Rules

Competition Rules

All work must be produced by the team during the event window.
Communication with people outside your team about problems is prohibited while a round is live.
Attacking event infrastructure outside the designated targets is grounds for immediate disqualification.
Organiser decisions on scoring disputes are final.

Submission Rules

Submit through the official platform only — emailed submissions are not accepted.
Late submissions are rejected automatically at the deadline.
Uploaded files must be under the stated size limit and in the stated format.
Keep a local backup of everything you submit.

Judging Criteria

Part 1: correctness first, then penalty time.
Part 2: flag point value, with write-up quality required for high-value challenges.
Part 3: functionality 40, technical depth 25, product thinking 20, demo 15.
Scores are published on the leaderboard as they are entered.

Plagiarism and Disqualification

Copied solutions, shared flags or shared code between teams lead to disqualification.
Submissions are checked for similarity across teams and against public sources.
Using another team's credentials or infrastructure is disqualifying.
Disqualified teams are removed from all leaderboards and forfeit any award.

Code of Conduct

General Guidelines