Rules for BuckeyeCTF 2025

1. Fair Play:

   • No brute forcing on remote infrastructure: Systematic or random guessing to discover flags is prohibited.
   • No flag sharing: Sharing flags with other teams or participants is strictly forbidden.
   • No flag hoarding: Participants should submit flags promptly.
   • Only one account per participant: Participants are only allowed to have one account. Each person can only play on one team.
   • No spamming: Do not spam challenge authors, players, or anyone else, on the platform or in the Discord.

2. Infrastructure Attacks:

   • Any attempts to attack, disrupt, or tamper with the competition infrastructure will result in immediate disqualification.

3. Consequences of Rule Violations:

   • Teams found violating any of the rules will be disqualified from the competition.

4. Eligibility for Prizes:

   • You must be located in the United States and competing in the Undergradate or the OSU divisions.
   • To receive a prize, you must privately provide your real name when requested. This information will only be used for prize distribution as required by the university.

5. Eligibility for Undergraduate Division:

   • You must be located in the United States.
   • You must be currently enrolled and actively taking classes in an undergraduate program or a high school.
   • You must link your official school .edu email address to be eligible for the undergraduate division. High school students should link their official school email address and request an admin to verify their eligibility.

6. Eligibility for the OSU Division:

   • You must be actively enrolled in an undergraduate program at The Ohio State University.
   • Your team may have up to 4 players.
   • You must link your official OSU email address to be eligible for the OSU category.

7. Other:

   • In unforeseen circumstances, we reserve the right to amend the rules as necessary.
   • We will change the name of, or remove, teams with offensive names.
   • The dynamic scoring calculation used is: max(round(-0.04 * n^2) + 500, 100) where n is the number of solves. That is to say that dynamically scored challenges start at 500 points and go down quadratically with the number of solves until there are 100 solves, at which point the challenge becomes worth its minimum value of 100 points.
   • The flag format is: bctf{[a-zéA-Z0-9_-]+}