System Siege is a systems-focused engineering competition organised by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (AVV), Chennai. Unlike typical hackathons, this event tests your ability to build a product from scratch, ship it live, think adversarially, respond under pressure, and recover gracefully from attacks. It rewards strong engineering judgment across the entire lifecycle — building, breaking, defending, learning, and hardening under pressure.
Who Should Apply
Open to all undergraduate students. Teams of 2 to 4 members. Inter-college and inter-specialisation teams are allowed. All team members must actively participate in building, defending, and presenting.
What You Can Build
Your project must be deployable, testable, and accessible during the entire event. Allowed project types: web applications, APIs with usable interfaces, browser-based tools, dashboards, and containerised multi-service systems. Not allowed: hardware-dependent projects, mobile apps, kernel-level OS modifications, non-functional mockups, or projects needing manual environment rescue.
Format & Timeline
Phase 1 (Build Window): 6 hours on 16 July 2026 — teams build and deploy an MVP. Phase 2 (Live Game Window): Continuous 18 hours from 16 July to 17 July — repositories become visible, bug reporting opens, and teams attack and defend each other's systems. Scoring includes build quality, attack points, recovery points, and time decay for unpatched bugs. No team is eliminated; a score floor of 25 points keeps everyone in the game.
Prizes
1st: ₹10,000 + Internship at Nithilam Tech
2nd: ₹6,000
3rd: ₹4,000
Total cash prize pool: ₹20,000.
Eligibility
Open to all undergraduates. Team size: 2 to 4 members. Inter-college teams allowed. All code must be original work created during the event.
How to Apply
Register by 15 July 2026 via the Unstop link. Registration fee: ₹300 per team.
