MathDB
Hacking the social network

Source: International Olympiad of Metropolises 2019 P2

September 3, 2019
combinatoricsKvant

Problem Statement

In a social network with a fixed finite setback of users, each user had a fixed set of followers among the other users. Each user has an initial positive integer rating (not necessarily the same for all users). Every midnight, the rating of every user increases by the sum of the ratings that his followers had just before midnight.
Let mm be a positive integer. A hacker, who is not a user of the social network, wants all the users to have ratings divisible by mm. Every day, he can either choose a user and increase his rating by 1, or do nothing. Prove that the hacker can achieve his goal after some number of days.
Vladislav Novikov