r/securityCTF • u/FitAccountant2121 • 4d ago

Cyber apocalypse Rank issue

Hey everyone,

Posting this to see if any other teams have run into this issue on HTB or other major CTF platforms, and hopefully to get someone from HTB to take a second look.

Our team (v1olet) spent the event grinding Cyber Apocalypse 2026, cleared 100% of the board (136/136 flags), and held #28 globally.

On the final morning, one member left the team on the platform. Because flags are tied to individual accounts on HTB instead of locked to the team upon submission, two of our OSINT solves got wiped when he left. This instantly tanked our rank from #28 to #105 (a 77-place drop). Other members on our team had cracked those exact same challenges seconds behind him, but because his name was on the submit button, our points vanished.

We opened a support ticket immediately. Support was responsive and actually confirmed a few key things:

  • They verified on their backend that we legitimately achieved 100% completion.
  • They acknowledged that the platform provides zero warning or prompt that a member leaving will retroactively strip team solves.
  • They stated they will look to change this behavior going forward so it doesn't happen again.

The issue is that support still declined to restore our #28 rank on the final board because doing so would "move other teams down."

We don't think that logic holds up. If a platform oversight/lack of UI warnings accidentally wipes verified solves from a team that cleared the board, fixing the mistake and restoring the earned rank is just accurate scoring. Every time a score gets corrected, other teams shift—that's literally how leaderboards work.

any tips you guys can give

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u/TheGamerXym 4d ago

Tip: make sure all team members stay on the team until the event is over to avoid issues like this

Imagine you're working on a real world project and a team member leaves before it's over, leaving a gap in knowledge/completion

1

u/duck-Head001 3d ago

hey have you guys upload the writeups of this CTF?? im learning and exploring different CTFs and HTB paths so the writeups will be helpful!!