Can confirm. They had code to lock the server to you and guarantee you got consecutive ports, but SSL handshake time on your HTTPS requests meant you wouldn't keep the lock for very long.
I started brute forcing before the jitter was very bad but only got one chunk in with my Python script.
I rewrote my solution in Go (which does http pipelining) and I could solve a whole password in about 4 minutes even during the peak time during the day when everyone was trying.
My Go solution could reliably get 10-20 valid port numbers in a row during peak times, and only jittered for 3 port numbers or so.
(I started my last block at about the same time as Eevee, but it ended up being 8044 so I had to settle for 21st place)
Which I knew that at the time :) I hit the last level when only 200 or so people had finished (I think, from memory) but I gave up on the jitter front. I don't have much experience with the lower level networking side and I ran out of time to dedicate to it. Having said that, I learnt a load along the way. Really looking forward to the next round.
I started brute forcing before the jitter was very bad but only got one chunk in with my Python script.
I rewrote my solution in Go (which does http pipelining) and I could solve a whole password in about 4 minutes even during the peak time during the day when everyone was trying.
My Go solution could reliably get 10-20 valid port numbers in a row during peak times, and only jittered for 3 port numbers or so.
(I started my last block at about the same time as Eevee, but it ended up being 8044 so I had to settle for 21st place)