Preventing cheating in future ICGA Events.

[Harvey Williamson]

The ICGA have created a page on Wikispaces https://icga.wikispaces.com/message/lis ... g+cheating

Here anyone can post ideas and proposed rule changes by clicking on the Discussion tab. You must 1st be a member of Wikispaces this takes about 11 seconds.

Only posts on this Wiki will be considered by the ICGA board.

[Graham Banks]

Don't run them, then nobody can be accused of cheating in them.

[JuLieN]

My proposal:

"Any contestant shall provide the ICGA with the sources of his engine. These sources are to remain secret and undisclosed, except for one purpose:
- in case of doubt on the originality of the program, a majority of two thirds of the ICGA's board can vote to examine those sources to investigate the issue. The board shall be at least 10 persons large and the required number of members approving the examination of the sources will be rounded up to the immediate higher number (for instance, a positive vote of 7 out of 10 members are required to authorize the consulting of the sources). During such an investigation it will be the responsibility of the ICGA to prevent any leak or accidental disclosure of these sources, that will be kept secret but for the investigation panel. Only limited and illustrative parts of the sources can get published in the final public report."

[Sean Evans]

Here is the best way to prevent cheating in the future of ICGA events:

[Sarciness]

Here is the best way to prevent cheating in the future of ICGA events:

This did make me laugh! I was/am? a Rybka fan, but I feel very let down by Vas. If he doesn't respond to the charges I will not be purchasing any more Rybka products (should any even be released in the future!)

[BubbaTough]

My proposal:

"Any contestant shall provide the ICGA with the sources of his engine. These sources are to remain secret and undisclosed, except for one purpose:
- in case of doubt on the originality of the program, a majority of two thirds of the ICGA's board can vote to examine those sources to investigate the issue. The board shall be at least 10 persons large and the required number of members approving the examination of the sources will be rounded up to the immediate higher number (for instance, a positive vote of 7 out of 10 members are required to authorize the consulting of the sources). During such an investigation it will be the responsibility of the ICGA to prevent any leak or accidental disclosure of these sources, that will be kept secret but for the investigation panel. Only limited and illustrative parts of the sources can get published in the final public report."

This sounds extremely reasonable. Even when I was working on a private engine, and extremely reticent to share executables let alone source, I would have agreed to this.

-Sam

[bob]

My proposal:

"Any contestant shall provide the ICGA with the sources of his engine. These sources are to remain secret and undisclosed, except for one purpose:
- in case of doubt on the originality of the program, a majority of two thirds of the ICGA's board can vote to examine those sources to investigate the issue. The board shall be at least 10 persons large and the required number of members approving the examination of the sources will be rounded up to the immediate higher number (for instance, a positive vote of 7 out of 10 members are required to authorize the consulting of the sources). During such an investigation it will be the responsibility of the ICGA to prevent any leak or accidental disclosure of these sources, that will be kept secret but for the investigation panel. Only limited and illustrative parts of the sources can get published in the final public report."

This sounds extremely reasonable. Even when I was working on a private engine, and extremely reticent to share executables let alone source, I would have agreed to this.

-Sam

What single person can you find to collect the sources that (a) is completely honest and (b) trusted to be honest by all participants, perticularly commercial ones that have much to lose if trade secrets are exposed?

It sounds simple in theory, but the practical implementation is a _real_ bitch to do.

[Edmund]

My proposal:

"Any contestant shall provide the ICGA with the sources of his engine. These sources are to remain secret and undisclosed, except for one purpose:
- in case of doubt on the originality of the program, a majority of two thirds of the ICGA's board can vote to examine those sources to investigate the issue. The board shall be at least 10 persons large and the required number of members approving the examination of the sources will be rounded up to the immediate higher number (for instance, a positive vote of 7 out of 10 members are required to authorize the consulting of the sources). During such an investigation it will be the responsibility of the ICGA to prevent any leak or accidental disclosure of these sources, that will be kept secret but for the investigation panel. Only limited and illustrative parts of the sources can get published in the final public report."

I find the phrasing of "require to authorize the consulting of the sources" way to vague. If I were to hand over sources of a commercial piece of software I would be more than interested in the process of "consulting" beforehand. Who gets to see the sources? Has the author any influence? I would propose as an optional alternative to the named procedure above, the author himself may chose 3 people well respected by the community, hand over the sources to them and have them vouch for security.

[Edmund]

My proposal:

"Any contestant shall provide the ICGA with the sources of his engine. These sources are to remain secret and undisclosed, except for one purpose:
- in case of doubt on the originality of the program, a majority of two thirds of the ICGA's board can vote to examine those sources to investigate the issue. The board shall be at least 10 persons large and the required number of members approving the examination of the sources will be rounded up to the immediate higher number (for instance, a positive vote of 7 out of 10 members are required to authorize the consulting of the sources). During such an investigation it will be the responsibility of the ICGA to prevent any leak or accidental disclosure of these sources, that will be kept secret but for the investigation panel. Only limited and illustrative parts of the sources can get published in the final public report."

This sounds extremely reasonable. Even when I was working on a private engine, and extremely reticent to share executables let alone source, I would have agreed to this.

-Sam

What single person can you find to collect the sources that (a) is completely honest and (b) trusted to be honest by all participants, perticularly commercial ones that have much to lose if trade secrets are exposed?

It sounds simple in theory, but the practical implementation is a _real_ bitch to do.

It would be feasable that the programmer is given a tool for encrypting the source as well as 10 different keys one for each panel member. There would be ways to enable a decryption only with 7/10 keys available.

[JuLieN]

My proposal:

"Any contestant shall provide the ICGA with the sources of his engine. These sources are to remain secret and undisclosed, except for one purpose:
- in case of doubt on the originality of the program, a majority of two thirds of the ICGA's board can vote to examine those sources to investigate the issue. The board shall be at least 10 persons large and the required number of members approving the examination of the sources will be rounded up to the immediate higher number (for instance, a positive vote of 7 out of 10 members are required to authorize the consulting of the sources). During such an investigation it will be the responsibility of the ICGA to prevent any leak or accidental disclosure of these sources, that will be kept secret but for the investigation panel. Only limited and illustrative parts of the sources can get published in the final public report."

This sounds extremely reasonable. Even when I was working on a private engine, and extremely reticent to share executables let alone source, I would have agreed to this.

-Sam

What single person can you find to collect the sources that (a) is completely honest and (b) trusted to be honest by all participants, perticularly commercial ones that have much to lose if trade secrets are exposed?

It sounds simple in theory, but the practical implementation is a _real_ bitch to do.

You're right. But practical solutions, or beginning of practical solutions, come to mind quite fast. For instance, the contestant could submit an encrypted archive. If a problem occurs and the board votes a code examination, the programmer would be required the archive password. Failure to comply would probably rule against him.

A problem that could occur is that the programmer would willingly provide a defective archive and, when confronted with this, answer that the ICGA damaged it. So when providing the archive the programmer would also have to provide a checksum, and would receive a "checksum confirmation" by the ICGA.

That way, the question of "who" would be less critical. Those sources archives should be stored by the ICGA, and the file access should be non-anonymous and logged.

There's always a solution, and I'm sure security professional would come with better ones.