That is actually kind of scary because you can pay to have programs added to certain virus scanners, iirc. (Although I somehow doubt anyone is going to pay thousands of dollars to shut out their competition when the prize is only a thousand dollars). (Not that I'm one to talk considering I spent over a thousand on assets for a contest with a max prize of a thousand).
I remember that for another contest, there were so many last minute entries that itch had issues and a bunch of entries didn't finish uploading in time and they ended up making a bunch of exceptions and extended the entry period.