Memory Corruption Forensics Competition Rules

Competitor Eligibility

  1. Competitors must be students of a university or college. This can include part-time students and full-time students.
  2. Any College or University in the United States of America is allowed to participate in both the Preliminary and Final round of the competition.
  3. International students may participate in both preliminary and final rounds of the competition, but may or may not be eligible for cash prizes.

Team Composition

  1. A team is defined as a group consisting of one to five students from a college or university.
  2. Teams can consist of one or more members, but no more than five members.
  3. If a college or university has more than one campus, team members must be from the same campus.
  4. Team members can only belong to one team, no members can be shared at any point or time.
  5. Each team must have a faculty member as an advisor. The faculty member must be physically present for the final round. The faculty member representative is allowed to advise their team but is not allowed to participate in the competition. The faculty member does not count as a team member.
  6. Once a team submits their answer for the preliminary round, that team cannot change or exchange any members.

Preliminary Round Rules

  1. Submissions are scored by the correctness of the answers and the time when the answer is submitted.
  2. If an answer is given correctly but does not have a screenshot with it, a lesser score may be given.
  3. Undocumented screenshots may receive a lesser score.
  4. A team is not required to answer all of the questions.
  5. Finalists will be offered the opportunity to participate in the final round at Penn State. If the team decides to refuse this offer, another team may be selected to participate.
  6. Any given team is allowed to submit their answers multiple times, however, the last set of answers that are submitted by the  team by the deadline are the answers that will be accepted.
  7. Answers must be submitted by the deadline date. There is no exception.
  8. If any team submits files that contain malicious software or malware,  your team will be immediately disqualified. Your college or university, Penn State Office Of Information Security, and appropriate law enforcement will be notified.

Final Round Rules

  1. Finalist teams will be notified that they are finalists via an email from the contest administration.
  2. Finalist teams must bring their own laptops.
  3. Teams participating in the final round must be present at the competition site. You are not allowed to participate in the final round remotely.
  4. The winning teams will be determined by which teams that receive the highest scores.