pritishn's blog

By pritishn, 3 years ago, In English

I couldn't find any discussion forum of interviewbit where I could report this, so I am putting it here. If any admin/official of interviewbit is active here, then you can look at it.

The rank 1 has submission time of 5 sec,10 sec,8 sec and 6 sec.

This CodeDrift contest was a 2 day long contest and 2 problems were revealed on 1st day and 2 problems were revealed on 2nd day. But the strange this about this is , the time penalty for each problem is calculated from the point when you click on the problem link and actually view the problem. But this kind of system is very vulnerable to cheating, I mean nothing is stopping me from making a fake account and submitting all solutions at the last minute to get the top position on ranklist. I had managed to solve all problems and now I can simply retake the test with another id and submit the solutions to get a good rank.

Last night taran_1407 ,gupta_samarth and neeraj_joshi were in top 3 I guess. And today, another person (clearly a cheater) is on rank 1 and two more people have also entered the top 5 list.

This doesn't make any sense at all. Why calculate penalty time from the point when you click the problem link?

Note: This is not the first contest where I have seen this system. Few months back they had conducted an inter-IIIT contest, where this system was also followed. It was 8 hours long contest maybe , but you had 2 hours submission time from the point you enter the contest. My rank had dropped from top-5 (when I finished my test) to top-30 (by the time the test period completed). What if 10 more people had cheated in this way by creating fake IDs?

EDIT: Post contest ranklist be like :

Now I hope they don't use this stupid system for contests.

EDIT: They changed and fixed the ranklist :)

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +38 Vote: I do not like it

Also, before I get accused of "revealing this loophole publicly helps a lot of cheaters", I'd like to say that, the damage is already done. Even if cheaters fill up the top ranks in this contest after seeing my post, it'll be better. Because then this obvious loophole may come under notice of the admins.

Sacrificing this contest and hoping for a better system is not a bad deal I guess, considering this system has apparently been followed in many previous contests.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +4 Vote: I do not like it

I hope interviewbit learns their lesson and not uses this stupid system again.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

Hi Pritishn

We value you bringing this to our attention, It is a valid concern and our team InterviewBit will work on fixing this before the next contest.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +13 Vote: I do not like it

    Hey sir,

    Fixing this is super easy, why don't you just measure problem solved time differently and just check the time elapsed since contest start, I myself left the contest midway because at the end of day 1 too the leaderboard was different and when I came Online the next day there were people who solved 2 questions within 30 seconds which I really don't think is possible for any human!

    Maybe define total penalty as sum of all times and time of a problem = time elapsed since contest start time!

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it -7 Vote: I do not like it

    You can fix this in the current contest too. Your system must have recorded the last submission time of each problem. You can re-arrange the ranklist now to make actually deserving people get top ranks.

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

      Hey pritishn!

      I'm Varun from the InterviewBit team. Thanks for flagging this issue.

      I've shared your suggestions with the tech team, and they are fixing it as we speak, and the corrected leaderboard will be updated in 3-4 days. I assure you that prizes will be based on the new and accurate rankings, and not the current rankings on the contest page now. We'll also ensure this is fixed for all future contests on InterviewBit and that this doesn't happen again.

      Thanks again for your help and sincere apologies for this! We only improve because of our users' feedback :)

      You can reach me at [email protected] if you have any more feedback and advice for the team.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +88 Vote: I do not like it

lol interviewbit

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
    Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +22 Vote: I do not like it

    I don't think this comment is related to the blog in anyway or helps anyone. I am sure if some low rated user would have commented this he would have got lot of negative votes .

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +47 Vote: I do not like it

Just gitgud and solve problems in 4 seconds instead smh kids these days

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3 years ago, # |
Rev. 3   Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

I reported that bug last year on around December when same thing happened with me when i was participating but got no response. They don't care about interviewbit, they are just interested in bringing students to their Scalar Academy.

Spoiler
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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

    This issue isn't even related to MOSS. This is a simple and clearly obvious loophole. I wonder who actually suggested this kind of system. Lol. That said, yes MOSS is pretty easy to fool.