Low-Level Hackathon

About the Event: Dive beneath the abstraction layer in the Low-Level Hackathon, a systems-focused engineering competition designed to test your mastery of hardware-adjacent software development! Participants will tackle low-level problem statements spanning operating systems, networking protocols, compilers, systems programming, and binary security. From memory management and process synchronization to custom packet analysis and binary analysis, teams must design, implement, debug, and optimize robust systems close to the metal. Available Tracks: Operating Systems: Memory management, process scheduling, concurrency, kernel modules. Computer Networks: Custom protocol stacks, raw socket programming, packet filtering. Compilers & Language Systems: AST parsing, IR generation, optimization passes, custom runtimes. Systems Programming: Low-level file I/O, driver interfaces, hardware acceleration. Low-Level Security: Binary analysis, vulnerability exploitation, mitigation mechanisms. Recommended Tech Stack: Hands-on familiarity with C/C++, Linux environments, terminal tools, Git, gdb/debuggers, build tools (Make/CMake), and computer architecture principles. Submission Deliverables: Source Code: Repository link (e.g., GitHub/GitLab) with build/compilation instructions. Executables / Binaries: Pre-compiled testable output. Technical Documentation: System architecture description and implementation details. Benchmarks & Demo: Empirical performance metrics, test suites, and a live or recorded functional demonstration. Rules & Regulations: Team Size: Teams may consist of 1 to 3 members. Original Code: All submitted code and architectures must be created during the official hackathon window (Nov 9th – 13th). Tooling & Libraries: Publicly available documentation, standard libraries, and open-source tooling are permitted unless restricted by specific track guidelines. Live Demos: Teams may be required to deliver a live demonstration of their engineered system to the judging panel. Decisions: All decisions made by the organizing and judging panels are final. Evaluation Criteria: Correctness: Full compliance with functional track specifications. Performance: Execution efficiency, throughput, latency, and memory footprint. Technical Depth: Rigorous application and low-level understanding. Robustness: Fault tolerance, edge-case handling, and execution stability. Code Quality: System architecture cleanliness, maintainability, and engineering hygiene. Innovation & Demonstration: Novelty of implementation and quality of the functional demonstration.