Hello codechef members,
So my case is as follows:
I took my part in JULY long contest 2018 and got a final rank of 143 however after the contest my correct submissions were removed and my rank dropped down to 624 because codechef find me involved in plagiarism as one another user blower submitted the same code for NMNMX as mine.
So I checked the blower’s profile and was surprised to know that the profile was made on the same day of submission for NMNMX i.e 15th of july now I am sure that this person hacked my account and just for submitting my code he/she make new account and submit the code.Which participant take part in a contest on the second last day of 10 day long contest and also after making a new account.
I also want to highlight the fact that according to my codechef profile i did PERFCONT problem however i never solved that problem.
Soon after the contest I got an email. In reply to that email I told everything as above.In reply to that the concerned peron said,“Even though I personally believe that you have not cheated, our rule does not have any provision for hacking so cannot do much about this case”.
Now what should I do, that person told me that my mistake was not protecting my account.So has all the codechef member hired some person to protect his/her account from being hacked, if so then I will admit my mistake and if no,I have the right to blame codechef for penalizing me for no reason.
@vijju123 @admin please help me.
1 Like
I highly doubt someone actually ^hacked^ your account. I think its just someone who knows you close enough to guess your password. For this I don’t think CodeChef is anywhere responsible. You should get a new strong password for your account and never tell anyone about it.
You dont have any strong ground for your account being hacked.
Let me ask this simple question-
Were you logged out unexpectedly at any point of time? For viewing anything, codechef allows only one window. You cannot even open another browser and log into your account to view your submissions- you must disconnect one of them first.
I do not see any such instance in your claims, so I am very less inclined to believe that your account got hacked. Since you gave no links, I cannot give any comments on codes being co-incidentally same or something as well.
But yeah, it does sound like someone can make a fake account and surf ideone to make sure people who made their code public are not penalized. But thats a vastly different story.
Concluding, I feel there is insufficient information at the moment. Also, protecting your account is your responsibility, not codechefs. If you log onto your friends PC and save password there, what can codechef do? This is the most common form of account hacking.
@sumukhbhardwaj -
I talked to the concerned @admin who handled your case. First things first, what you have given off in the question as his quite is simply twisting his words in your favour. Secondly, me and @admin both agree that you have no conclusive evidence of account hacking. That means, the case isnt even forwarded for consideration. If there’d had been any, we’d had given this case for consideration - which might had been later rejected because as security of your code and account is in your hands.
I also checked both the submissions using my software - they were both same an exact match word by word. Hence, this is a clear case of cheating - eliminating “co-incidental matching” of code from the picture.
For now, I’d want you to present a very conclusive evidence mailed either to that @admin who looked at your case, or me. I went through your PERFCONT submission and your latest submission to it was on 01:39 PM 20/10/17. This seems sheer nonsense to me - you claim you didnt submit this code, which is submitted 1 year ago, and are bringing it up now - giving an impression that the person who copied your code also made a submission to PERFCONT to make it obvious that “Hey I am hacking this account :).”. Plus, why did you not change password then if you noticed it earlier? In this case, its clear that your account getting hacked is your fault and not codechef’s.
Hence, we dismiss any further actions until a more conclusive evidence is presented to us.
It’s not possible,I have been at home for more than 2 month for vacations and I am not much close to any of my friend to guess the password.
If someone actually hacked your account, then I wonder what stopped him from hacking tourist account and stealing solutions (at least the approach) for all problems
please don’t make fun of my situation.
I frequently log into my pc and phone so if it has happened to me i thought i have logged into my phone account that’s why i ignored it.So I really don’t know whether it happened with me or not.
second thing i don’t use online ide so their is no point of that hacking type.
and i have never logged into my friend’s account or in any other device other than my PC and phone.
Thats bad. If you’d had remembered it, there would be a strong proof for your case.
Then the only options remain are codes being co-incidentally same if your innocent. Can you please give user and submission links?
these are the two submission this is mine CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone and this is blower’s CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone however i personally feel these are copied codes.
I have not submit code for PERFCONT i don’t know who do this…I don’t know how to prove my innocence please somebody help.
@sumukhbhardwaj I’m not making fun of you, I’m just saying that it’s not that easy to hack accounts, anyone must be knowing your password.
I am really in a big crisis as I have done nothing and everyone consider me a cheater
You sure its nothing like, anyone of your sibling doing that? There were cases where younger siblings did login to their brother’s account and submitted code.
Regarding evidence, anything which can at least primarily prove that your account is hacked. You provided us with a ~1 year old submission and that isnt exactly a conclusive evidence. You also dont recall the logging out thing, which was codechef’s primary warning on account getting compromised. Please think of something here.
I have removed the comments where you cited his replies- they arent needed. I have seen them already.
I also understand what you are going through and want to help as much as I want - but I cannot do that blindly. Please understand my PoV as well 
No I don’t have any sibling related to codechef or other form of competitive programming.
Now, that logging out thing happened with me very often but I always thought i might have logged in my phone.But if I have taken screenshot of that page how it would help me as anyone can do that by logging in his/her two devices.
The details of security feature cannot be made public. Sorry.
so practically i don’t have any other option except to face punishment even though i am innocent.
Unless you could think of any concrete evidence to present to us.