Scoring System¶
To support the unique style of the eCTF, MITRE has developed a unique scoring system to match. The eCTF incorporates a number of methods to reward teams for progressing through and excelling in the competition.
Teams may earn points through three different types of points: Design Phase Points, Attack Phase Points, and Miscellaneous Points.
Design Phase Points¶
During the Design Phase, teams may earn points by making progress towards submitting their design.
First, points can be earned through capturing Design Phase Flags. A number of challenges have been laid out to allow teams to demonstrate that they are staying on track with their secure design. By completing these challenges, teams will uncover flags that can be entered on the Scoreboard. Teams will earn full points for submitting the flag on time and partial points for submitting after the deadline.
Second, points can be earned by participating in the Bug Bounty. If your team happens to find a bug in the reference design, you can earn points for both identifying the bug and submitting a fix.
Attack Phase Points¶
The majority of points earned during the competition are done so during the Attack Phase. Points can be earned both for your design successfully withstanding the attacks of other teams (Defensive Points) and for successfully attacking other teams (Offensive Points).
Tip
Most points in the eCTF are earned during the Attack Phase, so make sure you stay on track during the Design Phase to make it past Handoff on time
Defensive Points begin passively accruing the second a team passes Handoff and enters the Attack Phase. For each Attack Phase Flag of a team that has not been captured by another team, the defending team earns a fixed number of points per hour. Once another team captures a flag, the defending team retains the points that had been earned by that flag, but it no longer continues to accrue further points.
Offensive Points are actively earned by capturing the Attack Phase Flags of other teams. Attack Phase Flags are the most complex component of the eCTF scoring system, as they have the most complex requirements. Teams are rewarded not only for the number of flags that they are able to capture, but also the difficulty and speed of the capture.
The difficulty of any particular flag is not readily apparent before the competition begins and it is neither fair nor feasible to manually judge the flags in real time or after the competition has ended. Instead, the eCTF scoring system uses two proxies to measure difficulty: speed of capture and number of teams capturing. The faster a flag is captured after it becomes available and the more teams capture that flag, the easier it likely is to capture it.
Similar to Defensive Points, the number of points available for an Attack Phase Flag accrues from the time the team enters the Attack Phase until the second it is first captured, at which point it no longer becomes more valuable.
These points are initially all granted to the first team to capture the flag. However, as more teams capture the flag, that initial point value gets split between the teams that capture it. This results in the often confusing phenomenon of teams’ scores decreasing as a flag they captured is captured by other teams, reducing their share of the flag.
Warning
Your score in the attack phase can actually go down when another team captures a flag you have already captured
To reward teams for their speed in capturing a flag, the points of a flag capture are not split evenly, but rather based on the number of shares they earn from how long it took a team to capture the flag after the flag’s first capture. The first team to capture a flag earns the maximum number of shares. Afterwards, the number of shares a team would earn decreases for each hour that passes after the first capture.
Additionally, to discourage teams hoarding flags, bonus points are awarded to the first team to capture any given flag.
Miscellaneous Points¶
Finally, there are a few additional ways to earn points.
First, teams who submit a design to Handoff may earn Documentation Points. Teams can earn points on a sliding scale based on the clarity of their code and supplemental documentation. These points are revealed at the Award Ceremony.
Second, after the Scoreboard closes, teams will be invited to submit a poster describing their design and experiences in the competition. These posters will be presented during the Poster Session. Posters will be awarded on a sliding scale based on feedback from a panel of expert judges attending the Poster Session.
Finally, the eCTF organizers may announce additional opportunities for earning points throughout the competition including participation in workshops or other activities.
