So I found these two cheaters in today's contest. They are from from the same institute (Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida). They have been doing this in at least 2 past contests now.
User 1: Akash Sharma akash_sharma100
User 2: Harsh Pandey Harsh_jiit
Obviously, these users made good efforts to hide the plagiarism by kinda writing same lines of codes in 2 different ways.
Submissions:
A: 87530347 by Akash and 87541714 by Harsh (Apparently Harsh has a lot of penalties in previous submissions that are not similar to Akash's)
B: 87559272 by Akash and 87554697 by Harsh
C1: 87578447 by Akash and 87583632 by Harsh (Can you notice Harsh tried to hide his func function definition, which is exactly the same as operate in Akash's code btw, below between the template? XD)
C2: 87587393 by Akash and 87592242 by Harsh (I dont need to say anything about this one XD)
Maybe if you present me with 2 similar looking submissions, I cannot definitely say whether they cheated. But it is very very suspicious for 2 users to have such kind of similarities in all the problems in a single contest.
Btw, they did the same in the last contest (#657) and both of them got big deltas (+139 and +71). Check their submissions.
I know CF team is very busy with more important things but I think pointing out even a single cheater is still worth it. Kindly take appropriate actions MikeMirzayanov
UPD The cheaters have been banned from the contest.
The funny thing is that akash_sharma100 changed his profile picture. He was putting his real life image. But because he is too shy to be seen as he is a cheater, he changed his profile picture. I've never seen something dumber than that in my life.
What's even better is that the bottom of the picture says "shutterstock.com"
No offence but I have seen more dumber than that, This blog explains how user jyexohluop cheated in Codejam Round 1A, and then posted it on LinkedIn. and later after his frauds caught he deleted his LinkedeIn profile too ....xD
How Dumber It Is.
It's a really hard but good exercise to see these people and still stay open-minded and not turn into a racist.
Idea: When someone from a certain place cheats, the whole place should be banned. (e.g country, institute, etc.)
But that would require everyone to fill in their real personal info...
So you're gonna ban tourist (or Mike himself) if some random boy from ITMO University cheats?
That's my point: Don't want everyone from ITMO know that it's you who get them banned because you are a filthy cheater? Then don't cheat!
Mike doesn't give contests, so he would get banned.
Is your 49 hr. ban over because you have again started useless commenting.
a weird way to climb up the leaderboard...
Idea: A person this dumb shouldn't be doing cp let alone being a specialist.
I don't really think you need a new account just for this though.
It is unrelated but how do you guys find them, is this just by luck or something else?
most probably he knows them personally, that's the reason he is using a fake account to write this blog..
I guess you're from the same institute as well. But it doesn't matter.
I think I have an idea how these cheating activities can be reduced. Codeforces should have a feature to report plag in which we can link the profiles of all the users who are allegedly cheating in the previous contests.
A bot could then match the recent contests' solutions of all those users and if a similarity above a certain percentage is found, then the case should be forwarded to a moderator who can penalize them as per the rules.
Also anyone can also link the similar solutions like above in the feature to make things easier. This can be helpful during the hacking phase as it will then be permanently displayed in rankings of the contest too.
I believe users from the same institutes read solutions of their colleagues and friends after the contest and are more likely to detect plag, but then they make another fake profile and flood the posts which is quite annoying for someone who doesn’t care about all these.
I don’t know if cf has this thing but if it doesn’t, then the idea should be forwarded to Mike sir.
Is it necessary for the users to be of same institute or city or country for that matter? Connections can be made even across countries or anything. That kind of checking will be very tedious if you consider such possibilities. Best way for now i feel is to ignore such people, they aren't gaining anything from this. But i agree something should be done to discourage such practises because they are harming the sport in long run. Reduction in rating perhaps, and if found cheating for an n number of times that id gets banned or something.
I cant figure it out why people cheat.This is a coding contest and you dont need to justify that why you couldnot perform well in a particular contest.
These idiots are degrading the reputation of India. They should be exposed like this.
seriously people make posts with fake id's just to discourage other contestants ,it all started with karan's case i think . it would be much better if you just focus on about increasing your skill, people who cheat can't get successful either way
Why don't you post this from your original account? Are you one of the cheater?
Says a "Probably" fake id.
Lmao you're actually Harsh_jiit, I mean, the nerve to come and comment this is unbelievable. At least delete your name from the code: 87660169
XD XD, he is too dumb, no doubt he cheated. LMAO
Maybe he is trying some reverse psychology to have some fun, no one can be this naive. Creating a new account and copy pasting his submission from his other account, which he already solved. LOL
Venti_chai: No one can be this naive
Harsh_jiit: Hold my beer
I bet @Harsh_jiit did not see this coming.
More like :
Venti_chai : no one can be this stupid
Harsh_jiit : Hold my brain
I appreciate the amount of efforts that this fake id with the name divide has done pretending to be me, by pasting my solution with my snippet so that people assume I am this dumb to comment here. But frankly this is not me.
Also, I would like to apologize to the community and specially each one of you here for my involvement in plagiarism, and that I shall abide by the rules in the future.
You know what the funny thing here is? These guys would be actually happy if they get reported for plagiarism because of the way CF deals with Plagiarism! Codeforces would just remove the last contest from their ratings and restore their previous ratings(which were better).I think CF should change the way they deal with Plagiarism.
In my opinion this is what they could do:
I have a pretty neat idea CF can just mark '*' with their username which will mean that person was caught in Plagiarism... They can unmark accounts after some time say 6 months... In case of indian contestants their is always a audience be it your friends or college peers.. That should help in somewhat limiting these activities...
Or even better give them a different color! And don't give them any tags along with their rating(Expert,Specialists etc)
Maybe something like this XD
Cheaters should be taken more seriously. it is very disappointing if u work hard and some cheater take your place, everyone should get what they deserve.
well these might be "those" codechef long challenge guys !! they have acquired these skills from there only
Both akash_sharma100 and Harsh_jiit have been disqualified from the round #658.
Thank you Mike, CF team and the huge support from all of you guys. This makes us believe in the system.
Even though they had negative deltas in that round (as opposed to the #657 in which they also cheated the same way), they should learn the lesson and not try to participate in any rated contests on CF ever again.
Codeforces is a respected platform and the CF team and the community works very hard to let it stay that way.
It worked to their advantage. Their negative delta is made 0.
Not really. Repeated violations increase penalties. I hope this serves as a lesson to them.
Hi Mike, I think it's hard to say that penalties will give them any lessons, considering that people somehow still cheat after tons of exposing blogs. I am totally aware that you are busy maintaining the servers and making sure the servers are stable during contests, but at some points in the future, please have a more strict policy against cheaters.
Auto comment: topic has been updated by CheaterGetBanned (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Every day I see a lot of LinkedIn posts of people sharing that they became CM on codeforces or 5/6* on codechef. The most common thing which I observed among them is, they are green or cyan till 1/2 months before, but suddenly their rating jumps to 1900+ in just next 3 contests. The post shows how they do such things. Cheaters of highest level they are. The reason for so much cheating is that, a common thing has indulge in cheaters mind that CP = JOB. Thats why they try everything to become Blue or CM. The problem with such cheating is that even the genuine people are not trusted. #ExposeCheaters.
CF community should stand against such malicious activities.
mike once he sees this comment in 2 days
It is brute-force solution my solution matches with editorial too and a lot of other red coders too, and if you will look closely our loops run for different length.
Yes you're right, apologies. I just got to check his other solutions as well.
Its alright ..just wanted to say please don't drag other people in your personal vendetta against harsh.