# Terms of Service

Effective Date: 14 May 2026

1. Identification of the Trader

In accordance with Romanian consumer-protection and e-commerce law, the trader operating this Platform is identified as follows:

2. Operator

This Platform is operated by Terminal43 SRL, a company registered in Bucharest, Romania ("we", "us", "the Operator").

3. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing, registering for, or using Terminal43CTF ("the Platform"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). These Terms constitute a legally binding agreement between you and Terminal43CTF. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not access or use the Platform.

Your continued use of the Platform following the posting of any changes to these Terms constitutes acceptance of those changes. We encourage you to review these Terms periodically.

4. Description of Service

Terminal43CTF is a cybersecurity education and competition platform that provides the following services:

• Capture The Flag (CTF) Challenges -- Hands-on cybersecurity exercises across multiple categories including Web, Pwn, Crypto, Forensics, OSINT, Reverse Engineering, and more, with dynamic scoring and containerized environments.
• Interactive Courses -- Structured learning paths featuring video lessons, code playgrounds, labs, quizzes, and certificates of completion.
• Classrooms -- Instructor-managed educational environments with assignments, grading, analytics, and student progress tracking.
• Organizations -- Multi-user team management with private content, custom branding, billing, and administrative controls.
• Live CTF Events -- Time-bound competitive events with real-time scoreboards, team modes, and various formats (Jeopardy, Attack-Defense, King of the Hill, and others).
• Community Features -- Writeup publishing, discussion forums, user profiles, achievement systems, and leaderboards.
• Course Marketplace -- A platform for creators to publish and monetize cybersecurity courses.

5. Service & License

Terminal43CTF is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. When you purchase a subscription or enroll in a course, you are purchasing access to the service, not the content itself. Specifically:

• You receive a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the challenges, courses, labs, and related materials solely through the Platform for your personal educational purposes.
• No ownership of any course content, challenge materials, lab environments, or platform resources is transferred to you.
• Access to content is provided only within the Platform. You may not download, copy, screenshot for redistribution, record, or otherwise extract course materials, challenge descriptions, or lab configurations for use outside the Platform.
• Your access to paid content depends on having an active subscription or valid enrollment. If your subscription expires or is terminated, your access to paid content ends accordingly. Free challenges and community features remain accessible.
• We reserve the right to update, modify, or retire challenges and course content at any time to improve quality, accuracy, or relevance.

5.1 Nature of the Offerings: Provision of Digital Services

All paid offerings on the Platform (including but not limited to challenges, CTF events, courses, course modules, lessons, labs, learning paths, sandboxed environments, certifications, hint packs, virtual currency, and subscriptions of any kind) are supplied to You as digital services. They are not goods, not tangible products, and not downloadable digital content delivered on a tangible medium.

Consumption of any paid offering requires the active, continuous use of computational resources operated by Terminal43, including but not limited to sandboxed Docker containers, ephemeral lab environments, code execution sandboxes, watcher scripts, automated grading systems, packet-capture infrastructure, virtual terminals, real-time validators, scoring engines, and other server-side processing. Without such computational resources, the offerings cannot be consumed, executed, validated, or completed. The supply therefore falls within the scope of Directive (EU) 2019/770 on certain aspects concerning contracts for the supply of digital content and digital services, and Romanian Law no. 296/2004 (Codul consumului), as the supply of digital services.

Commencement of performance and waiver of the 14-day right of withdrawal. By purchasing, subscribing to, redeeming, or otherwise activating any paid offering, You expressly request and consent to Terminal43 commencing the provision of the service immediately upon successful payment and account access. You acknowledge that, in accordance with Article 16(m) of Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights (transposed into Romanian law as OUG no. 34/2014, art. 16 lit. (m)), the statutory 14-day right of withdrawal is irrevocably waived once the service has begun to be performed with Your prior express consent. Performance is deemed to have begun upon the earliest of: (i) the first launch of a challenge container, lab environment, or sandboxed execution; (ii) the first submission of a flag, code, or answer for automated evaluation; (iii) the first access to a paid course, lesson, or learning-path stage; (iv) the first redemption of any reward, hint, coin, or benefit included in the offering; or (v) any other interaction that consumes Terminal43 computational resources associated with the offering. Until performance has begun, You retain the statutory withdrawal right and may exercise it by written notice to contact@terminal43.ro.

Pro-rata fee on termination after performance has begun. Where Romanian or Union law nonetheless grants You a right to terminate a partly-performed service contract, You shall pay Terminal43 an amount that is in proportion to what has already been provided to You up to the point at which You inform Us of the termination, calculated on the basis of the total contract price agreed.

Consumer rights for non-conforming services preserved. Nothing in this section limits Your statutory rights in case Terminal43 fails to provide a service that conforms to the agreed terms, including the right to seek remedy under Directive (EU) 2019/770 and Romanian implementing law.

6. User Accounts

To access most features of the Platform, you must create an account. By creating an account, you represent and warrant that:

• You are at least 16 years of age. If you are under 18, you confirm that you have obtained parental or guardian consent to use the Platform.
• All registration information you provide is accurate, current, and complete, and you will maintain and update it to keep it so.
• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activities that occur under your account.
• You will maintain only one account per person. Creating multiple accounts to circumvent bans, scoring rules, or resource limits is strictly prohibited.
• You will notify us immediately of any unauthorized use of your account or any other breach of security.

Terminal43CTF reserves the right to suspend, disable, or terminate any account at any time, with or without notice, for conduct that we determine, in our sole discretion, violates these Terms, is harmful to other users or the Platform, or for any other reason.

7. Acceptable Use

Terminal43CTF is a cybersecurity training platform. Challenges are intentionally designed to contain vulnerabilities and are meant to be exploited -- that is the entire purpose of the Platform. However, the following activities are strictly prohibited:

• Attacking platform infrastructure. Do not attempt to exploit, compromise, or disrupt the core Platform systems, databases, servers, or networking infrastructure. Your exploitation activities must remain within the designated challenge environments.
• Attacking other users. Do not attempt to access, modify, or interfere with other users' accounts, sessions, containers, or data.
• Sharing flags or solutions during active competitions. During live CTF events, sharing flags, solutions, hints, or walkthrough information with other participants undermines fair competition and is prohibited. Writeups may be shared after the event concludes or after you have solved the challenge (for non-event challenges).
• Automated mass flag submission. Brute-forcing flags through automated scripts or tools designed to submit large volumes of guesses is not permitted.
• Disrupting shared challenge containers. Shared challenge instances serve multiple users simultaneously. Do not intentionally crash, corrupt, deface, or otherwise disrupt these shared environments beyond what is required to solve the challenge.
• Uploading malware to the Platform. Do not upload malicious software, backdoors, or harmful code to the Platform itself. This restriction does not apply to activities within designated challenge containers where such techniques may be part of the intended solution.
• Harassment or abuse. Engaging in harassment, hate speech, threats, doxxing, discrimination, or any other form of abuse toward other users through community features (forums, chat, writeups, profiles) is prohibited.
• Circumventing access controls. Do not attempt to bypass subscription restrictions, access paid content without authorization, or manipulate the scoring or gamification systems.

Violations of these rules may result in warnings, temporary suspensions, permanent bans, disqualification from events, or forfeiture of points and achievements, at our sole discretion.

8. Intellectual Property

8.1 Definition of Knowledge Content

For the purposes of these Terms, "Knowledge Content" means any educational, training, or skill-development material made available through, hosted on, or generated by the Platform, including without limitation: challenges (Web, Pwn, Crypto, Forensics, OSINT, Reverse Engineering, and similar), CTF events, course modules, lessons, labs, exercises, learning paths, scenarios, simulations, datasets, packet captures, writeups, hints, model solutions, sample code, evaluation rubrics, grading criteria, watcher scripts, badges, achievements, certificates, leaderboard configurations, and any other text, code, audio, video, image, or interactive material intended to convey, test, or assess knowledge or skill.

8.2 Platform Knowledge Content

All Knowledge Content created, authored, designed, developed, commissioned, or licensed by Terminal43CTF ("Platform Knowledge Content"), together with the Platform software, infrastructure code, sandbox and container orchestration code, scoring engines, design system, logos, trademarks, trade names, and visual identity, is the exclusive intellectual property of Terminal43 SRL or its licensors and is protected by Romanian, Union, and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

Subject to Your continuing compliance with these Terms and payment of applicable fees, Terminal43CTF grants You a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to access and use the Platform Knowledge Content solely for Your own personal, non-commercial learning, while Your account is active. No other right or license is granted, whether by implication, estoppel, or otherwise. You may not reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transmit, modify, translate, adapt, create derivative works of, reverse-engineer, decompile, extract by automated means, or commercially exploit any Platform Knowledge Content without the prior written permission of Terminal43CTF.

8.3 User-Generated Content

Any content that You as an individual user create and upload to the Platform (including flag answers, code submissions, writeups, comments, forum posts, profile bio, avatar, and similar contributions, collectively "User-Generated Content") remains Your property. You retain all intellectual property rights in Your User-Generated Content.

You grant Terminal43CTF a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display, adapt for technical purposes, and serve Your User-Generated Content solely to the extent necessary to operate the Platform, deliver the service to You and to other authorised users, generate anonymised and aggregated statistics, and comply with legal obligations. This license terminates when You delete the User-Generated Content or close Your account, except for anonymised aggregations that no longer identify You and for copies retained for legitimate backup-cycle expiration (maximum 90 days) or where retention is required by law.

You warrant that You own or have the necessary rights to grant the license above and that Your User-Generated Content does not infringe any third party rights or violate any law.

8.4 Organization Knowledge Content

Where an Organization (such as a school, university, employer, training provider, or community) uses the Platform to upload, sync, import, author, or otherwise make available its own Knowledge Content for the benefit of its members ("Organization Knowledge Content"), the following applies:

• The Organization retains all intellectual property rights in its Organization Knowledge Content. Nothing in these Terms transfers, assigns, or licenses any ownership of Organization Knowledge Content to Terminal43CTF.
• The Organization grants Terminal43CTF a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license, exercisable solely for the purpose of operating the Platform, to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display, evaluate, grade, and serve the Organization Knowledge Content to the members and authorised users of that Organization (and to no other users), for the duration of the Organization account or until the Organization removes the content.
• Terminal43CTF shall not use Organization Knowledge Content to train machine-learning models, to market to other organizations, to repurpose for Platform Knowledge Content, or to display, license, or otherwise make available outside the scope of the Organization own members, except with the Organization prior written consent.
• The license terminates automatically upon (i) the closure or non-renewal of the Organization account, (ii) the Organization removal of the Organization Knowledge Content, or (iii) the Organization written request for return or deletion. Terminal43CTF will, within 30 days of such termination, permanently delete or, at the Organization written request, return all copies of the Organization Knowledge Content in its possession or control, except where retention is required by law or for legitimate backup-cycle expiration (maximum 90 days).
• The Organization warrants that it owns or has the necessary rights and licenses to upload the Organization Knowledge Content and to grant the license above, and that doing so does not infringe any third party intellectual property, privacy, or other rights. The Organization shall indemnify and hold harmless Terminal43CTF from any third-party claim arising from the Organization Knowledge Content.
• Member access to Organization Knowledge Content is incidental to the member use of the Organization services and does not grant the member any ownership or rights beyond authorised use during membership.

8.5 Course Marketplace and Third-Party Creators

Independent creators who publish courses or challenges through the Course Marketplace retain ownership of their original content, subject to the separate Creator Agreement governing publication, revenue share, and licence terms. Where a creator is acting on behalf of an Organization, the Organization Knowledge Content rules in Section 8.4 apply.

8.6 Challenge Solutions and Writeups

After successfully solving a challenge (or after a live event concludes), You may publish writeups describing Your solution approach. You are responsible for ensuring that Your writeups do not violate any applicable competition rules, instructor-imposed restrictions, or the intellectual property rights of any rightsholder (including Terminal43CTF or an Organization whose Knowledge Content the writeup is based on).

8.7 Trademarks and Brand Assets

"Terminal43", "Terminal43CTF", the Terminal43 logo, and related word marks, logos, and slogans are trademarks of Terminal43 SRL. You may not use any Terminal43 trademark without prior written permission, except for nominative fair use in factual references to the service.

8.8 Notice of Alleged Infringement

If You believe that any content on the Platform infringes Your intellectual property rights, please send a written notice to contact@terminal43.ro containing: (a) Your contact information, (b) identification of the work claimed to be infringed, (c) identification of the allegedly infringing material with sufficient detail to locate it, (d) a statement of good-faith belief that the use is unauthorised, (e) a statement under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate and that You are the rightsholder or authorised to act on the rightsholder behalf, and (f) Your physical or electronic signature.

9. Organizations & Classrooms

Organizations and Classrooms provide collaborative environments with elevated administrative visibility:

• Administrative Visibility. Organization administrators, managers, and classroom instructors can view member activity, progress, submissions, grades, and analytics within their respective scope. By joining an organization or classroom, you consent to this level of visibility.
• Organizational Responsibility. Organization owners are responsible for ensuring that their members comply with these Terms. Misuse of organizational features (such as bulk account creation for abuse, or hosting unauthorized events) may result in suspension of the entire organization.
• Classroom Rules. Classroom content, grading policies, collaboration policies, and hint availability are subject to the instructor's discretion. Students are expected to follow any additional rules set by their instructors.
• Data Access. Organization and classroom administrators only have access to data that falls within their organizational or classroom scope. They do not have access to your activity outside of their managed environments.

10. Payments & Subscriptions

Certain features of the Platform require paid subscriptions or purchases. All payments are processed through Stripe, a third-party payment processor. By making a purchase, you also agree to Stripe's terms of service.

• Subscriptions. Paid subscriptions (individual Pro plans, organization plans, course subscriptions) automatically renew at the end of each billing cycle unless cancelled before the renewal date. You may cancel at any time through your account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• Pricing. Prices are displayed in the applicable currency at the time of purchase. We reserve the right to change pricing at any time, but changes will not affect active subscription periods.
• Refunds. Refund requests are handled in accordance with applicable consumer protection laws. If you believe you are entitled to a refund, please contact us at the address provided in Section 20.
• Course Marketplace. Course creators set their own subscription pricing for courses published through the marketplace. Terminal43CTF takes a commission on marketplace transactions as specified in the creator agreement. Access to paid courses requires an active subscription; access is revoked when the subscription lapses.
• Virtual Currency (Coins). Coins are a virtual currency used within the Platform for unlocking hints, purchasing cosmetic items, and accessing certain features. Coins have no real-world monetary value and are non-refundable, non-transferable, and cannot be exchanged for cash.

11. Containers & Infrastructure

The Platform provides containerized environments for challenge solving and lab exercises. These containers operate under the following conditions:

• Sandboxing. Challenge containers are isolated and sandboxed. They do not have internet access by default and are subject to CPU, memory, network, and disk resource limits.
• Container Escapes. You must not attempt to escape the container sandbox unless that is explicitly the objective of the challenge. Unauthorized attempts to access the host system, other users' containers, or Platform infrastructure from within a container constitute a violation of these Terms.
• Resource Limits. Containers are subject to resource quotas. Exceeding these limits or attempting to consume excessive resources (e.g., fork bombs, crypto mining) is prohibited.
• Timeouts. Containers automatically terminate after a configurable idle timeout (default: 30 minutes) or maximum lifetime (default: 4 hours). You may extend or restart containers within the allowed limits.
• Data Persistence. Container data is ephemeral. Any data stored within a challenge container may be lost when the container is stopped, restarted, or terminated. The Platform is not responsible for loss of data within containers.
• Concurrent Limits. The number of containers you may run simultaneously depends on your subscription tier. Exceeding your limit requires stopping existing containers first.

12. Privacy

Your privacy is important to us. Our collection, use, and protection of your personal data is governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. By using the Platform, you consent to the practices described in the Privacy Policy.

13. Disclaimers

As-Is Basis. The Platform and all content, services, and features are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

Ethical Use. The skills, techniques, and knowledge gained through the Platform are intended exclusively for ethical and authorized purposes, including but not limited to education, authorized penetration testing, security research, and professional development. Terminal43CTF is not responsible for how users apply the knowledge gained through the Platform. Any unauthorized use of these skills against systems you do not own or have explicit authorization to test is illegal and solely your responsibility.

Intentionally Vulnerable Code. Challenges and lab environments may contain intentionally vulnerable code, misconfigured services, and exploitable software. This code is provided solely for educational purposes. You must not deploy, replicate, or use any challenge code, configurations, or techniques in production environments.

Service Availability. We do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation of the Platform. Scheduled maintenance, system updates, and unforeseen outages may temporarily affect availability. We will make reasonable efforts to provide advance notice of planned downtime.

14. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Terminal43CTF, its officers, directors, employees, agents, and affiliates shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to loss of profits, data, use, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or relating to:

• Your access to, use of, or inability to access or use the Platform;
• Any conduct or content of any third party on the Platform;
• Any content obtained from the Platform;
• Unauthorized access, use, or alteration of your transmissions or content;
• Loss of data stored within challenge containers or temporary environments;
• Any actions taken by users based on skills or knowledge acquired through the Platform.

In no event shall our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Platform exceed the amount you have paid to Terminal43CTF in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or one hundred US dollars ($100), whichever is greater.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages. In such jurisdictions, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by law.

15. Termination

By Terminal43CTF. We may suspend or terminate your account and access to the Platform at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. Reasons for termination may include, but are not limited to: violation of these Terms, fraudulent or illegal activity, extended periods of inactivity, or conduct that is harmful to other users or the Platform.

By You. You may delete your account at any time through your profile settings. Upon deletion, your personal data will be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable data protection laws (including GDPR rights to erasure). Please note that certain data may be retained as required by law or for legitimate business purposes.

Effect of Termination. Upon termination, your right to access the Platform ceases immediately. Any active subscriptions will be cancelled, and no refund will be issued for the remaining portion of the billing cycle unless required by applicable law. Running containers will be terminated. Content you have published (writeups, forum posts) may remain on the Platform in anonymized form.

16. Changes to Terms

We reserve the right to modify these Terms at any time. When we make material changes, we will notify users through one or more of the following methods: a prominent notice on the Platform, an email to the address associated with your account, or an in-app notification.

The updated Terms will include a revised "Effective Date" at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Platform after the effective date of the revised Terms constitutes your acceptance of the changes. If you do not agree with the revised Terms, you must stop using the Platform and may delete your account.

17. Dispute Resolution

In the event of a dispute, we encourage you to contact us first at contact@terminal43.ro to seek an amicable resolution. If no resolution is reached within 30 days, the dispute shall be submitted to mediation before litigation.

18. Illegal Content & DSA Notices

In accordance with Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065), any person may notify us of content available through the Service that they consider illegal. Notices should be sent to contact@terminal43.ro with the subject "DSA notice" and should include:

• a sufficiently substantiated explanation of why the content is alleged to be illegal;
• the exact URL or location of the content on the Service;
• the notifier's name and contact details (not required where the notice concerns content covered by Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU on combating sexual abuse and exploitation of children);
• a good-faith statement of belief that the information and allegations are accurate and complete.

We acknowledge receipt of substantiated notices without undue delay and act in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner. The same address may be used for copyright complaints; please include sufficient evidence of ownership and identification of the allegedly infringing material.

19. Complaints, ANPC & Dispute Resolution

If You are a consumer resident in the European Union, the following channels are available for raising complaints about the service and for resolving disputes without going to court:

1. Contact us first. Send complaints to contact@terminal43.ro. We reply within 7 business days and aim to resolve within 30 days.
2. If unresolved, contact ANPC. Autoritatea Națională pentru Protecția Consumatorilor is the Romanian consumer-protection authority and accepts complaints from consumers domiciled in Romania.
3. Alternative Dispute Resolution (SAL). A free, non-judicial resolution route via an authorised SAL entity, in line with Romanian Law no. 38/2024 and EU Directive 2013/11/EU on consumer ADR.
4. Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). The European Commission ODR platform is available for cross-border consumers and EU residents who purchased the service online.

Recourse to ANPC, SAL, or ODR is without prejudice to Your right to bring an action before the competent courts.

20. Governing Law & Jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Romania. Any disputes arising from or in connection with these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts of Bucharest, Romania, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer protection provisions of your country of residence that may apply under EU law.

21. Contact

If you have questions, concerns, or legal inquiries about these Terms, please contact us at: