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Austria Cyber Security Challenge - Conditions of Participation

Conditions of participation for ACSC 2025
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Everybody is allowed to participate in the qualification for the Austria Cyber Security Challenge 2025. However, participation in the finale for the “junior” and “senior” categories requires Austrian citizenship, living in Austria or enrollment in an Australian educational institution.

The cut-off date for the age groups is the 31st of December of the competition year (for ACSC 2025, it is 31.12.2025).

The organizers reserve the right to change the categorization of participants if it is believed that it was not done correctly.

The ACSC qualifiers are an individual competition. This means that sharing solutions, information or other content with other individuals or groups is prohibited. This also applies to the use of solutions created by other individuals or groups. The use of solutions created by other individuals or groups can lead to disqualification.

The code of conduct for the ACSC is presented further below in this page.

Category “junior”
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Participation is open to everybody born between 01.01.2005 and 31.12.2010 who has Austrian citizenship, lives in Austria or is enrolled in an Austrian educational institution.

The top 20 juniors, based on qualification, will be invited to the finale.

Category “senior”
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Participation is open to everybody born between 01.01.2000 and 31.12.2004 who has Austrian citizenship, lives in Austria or is enrolled in an Austrian educational institution.

The top 20 seniors, based on qualification, will be invited to the finale.

Category “open”
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The category “open” is OPEN to ALL security-interested people, regardless of age, citizenship or place of residence.

The top 21 players from the open category, based on qualification, will be invited to the finale.

Exceptions
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Persons who hold an official or similar teaching position at a university, university of applied sciences, or comparable educational institution and whose employer (educational institution) has partnered with Cyber Security Austria to develop challenges for the ACSC qualifiers or the final are excluded from participation.

The organizer reserves the right to exclude any person from participation if false information about that person is thought to have been provided.

This English translation of the conditions of participation is given as a courtesy. In case of discrepancies, the German version shall prevail.

Code of Conduct
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The goal of this competition is to allow participants to practice their skills and have fun. We want everyone to enjoy a fair game. For this reason, we ask you to follow these simple rules:

  • No attacks against the infrastructure. Attempts to circumvent the limitations imposed by the CTF infrastructure are forbidden. We will reward responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities with eternal glory. Please open a ticket and inform us whenever you suspect that you are allowed to do specific actions that the infrastructure should have prevented.
  • No DoS. Causing unnecessarily high loads for CPU, traffic, memory, I/O, etc. on our infrastructure, or any other party, is strictly prohibited.
  • **Do not try to bruteforce flags by doing an unreasonable number of attempts in the flag submission page. We guarantee our flags to be unguessable™.
  • If you think you found a way to hack into a challenge more easily than intended, please let us know by opening a ticket.
  • Attacking other participants’ devices is severely prohibited and will lead to disqualification.
  • Sharing flags, exploits, or hints between participants is severely prohibited.
  • Organizers are actively monitoring the network traffic and record violations reported by participants. Violation of the rules or any other hostile behavior may lead to deduction of points or exclusion from the competition. Please, let’s be nice ❤️.

These rules may change as more issues are raised by the participants. Also, the organizers keep the right to change them at any time. Please remember that it is impossible to list all rules and exceptions that apply to the CTF competition. When in doubt, use common sense or open a ticket on Discord.

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