1/25/17: The 2016 Codebreaker Challenge results are now available!

The 2016 challenge results are now available - they can be found on the 2016 Challenge Results page.

Thanks again to everyone that participated!

1/1/17: The 2016 Challenge has come to an end

The 2016 Codebreaker Challenge has come to an end. Thanks to everyone that participated, and congratulations to everyone that made progress in one or more of the challenge's tasks (especially those that solved all six!) We will post a more complete summarization of the results and the challenge winners in the coming weeks!

For those students still interested in solving the challenge, we will leave the solution submission page up for the next few weeks (at least.) Any progress won't be reflected on the leaderboard, however.

9/13/16: A few more verification logic updates

An issue with the Task 5 verification logic was discovered that would cause authentication codes derived from knowledge of the Windows keygen binary to not be validated successfully (codes derived from knowledge of the Linux keygen binary should have validated successfully.) This has now been fixed.

An issue was also found in the Task 6 verification logic that resulted in cmd files not being validated successfully under certain conditions. This issue has been resolved, and after re-grading the previous Task 6 solutions, we found our first set of 2016 Codebreaker Challenge solvers! Congratulations to those individuals for their hard work and significant accomplishment! For the leaderboard, we have modified the solution time to that of their original winning solutions.

Finally, a special thanks to those individuals that reported issues with the site and hung with us while we worked to resolve them. We really appreciate it!

9/10/16: Update to the Task 4 and Task 5 verification logic

An issue was identified with the Task 4 and Task 5 solution grading logic that could make it easier to solve than intended. This has been corrected, and the affected users notified.

9/10/16: Minor updates to the Task 6 feedback logic

The Codebreaker Challenge is now underway! Great work to all those students that have made progress on it thus far!

We made minor updates to the Task 6 solution verification logic to improve the feedback given. This makes the solution feedback line up a bit better with the submitted solutions.

9/5/16: Registration is open!

Registration is now open! Even if you participated last year, you will need to register again to create a new account.

We look forward to having you participate in the 2016 Codebreaker Challenge!