# Answer Submission

The Cyber Skyline platform was designed with a seamless end user experience in mind. The challenge interface accepts free-form input as submission and the platform will parse out important details and feed that into the Scoring Engine. 

You may use natural language formulate your responses, for example, if a question "how many addresses are in a /24 network?" You can enter `256 addresses` or `two hundred and fifty six addresses` as your answer and both will be marked as correct.

Most of the times, if you can find something from the source artifact/system that is representative of the answer, just simply copying that snippet as your submission will be fine. However, you should note the special inputs section below.

## Special Inputs

To avoid ambiguity in certain circumstances such as for date and time input, we use ISO8601 style date format, specifically `YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm` for all date inputs. You'll get a popup to pick your date or you may enter it in the previously stated format.

![Challenge Interface Date Picker for January 30, 2020 12:25 pm](https://1676911436-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MGdgf2bLA5e4H_ngsss%2F-MGeGy1tyC3qaJmOF42x%2F-MGeKYIS6H3UUgZQqz9b%2FChallenge%20Date%20Picker.png?alt=media\&token=400e3a41-fc1d-47c6-a9c3-b440042477d1)

Other special inputs include IP addresses or hexadecimal inputs where the input box will prevent you from entering anything other than an allowed character. 

## Flags

Flags are used to represent sensitive or secret information on a computer system or network. By extracting a flag value, you demonstrate your ability to extract information from the challenge. 

The format for a flag is: **SKY-ABCD-####**. The flags will always start with "SKY", then be followed by 4 random letters and 4 random numbers.

You should submit the flag as-is for any question that asks for you.

{% hint style="danger" %}
Never share your answers or flags with other users, we want everyone to have a fair shot at doing the challenges on their own. For competitive events, sharing answers or flags, including methodology for obtaining them, may result in disqualification.
{% endhint %}