Rules of Conduct
Last Updated August 2023
Ethics Statement
The NCL aspires to communicate and promote an honor code, ethical values, and behaviors that are essential elements of the information security workforce. We are not here to help people learn to be Blackhats. Rather, we hope to help develop players to become IT and security professionals who can make a difference in our 21st century information, knowledge, and innovation economies.
Spirit of the NCL Games
The spirit of the NCL is to foster an excitement and eagerness for learning through friendly competition and we have developed the Rules of Conduct to support this spirit. These rules are designed to maintain a fairness in the competition and safeguard the community from behavior that negatively affects the experience of others.
Simplified Rules of Conduct
- The Individual Game is an individual event - you must participate in this event by yourself. You may NOT collaborate with anyone else.
- During the Team Game, you may collaborate with anyone on your team (per the Team Roster on cyberskyline.com) without restriction. This does NOT apply to anyone outside of your team, including others from your school who are on different teams.
- Coaches may NOT assist students during Individual Game and Team Game (Coaches may assist students in the Gymnasium and in the Practice Game).
- You may discuss all challenges from each game after they have ended with Coaches & fellow Players; however, you may NOT post questions or answers online at any point (even after the games have ended).
- Behave in a professional manner, including on NCL social media channels, the NCL Slack channels, and when interacting with NCL and Cyber Skyline representatives.
- Follow all rules of engagement against live designated targets on the cityinthe.cloud domain.
- Do not attack the competition platform (cyberskyline.com).
- Do not sabotage any game elements, including online resources (e.g. modifying another Player’s competition environment or editing a Wikipedia page to provide false information).
- Do not modify any unique IDs assigned to you by the competition platform and do not access competition resources using another competitor’s unique ID. Do not misrepresent yourself or use multiple personas.
- Do not violate any local, state, federal, or international laws.
Can I…? | During Individual Game | During Team Game | Before/After the Games |
discuss challenges with others? | No | Only within your team | Yes |
give or receive tips/techniques/tools/hints or other assistance with others? | No | Only within your team | Yes |
post challenges or answers online? | No | No | No |
sabotage online resources (e.g. Wikipedia) to confuse others? | No | No | No |
run automated tools against challenges on cityinthe.cloud? | Only on specified targets | Only on specified targets | No |
Documents