I believe they are a part of Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective by Bryant and O'Hallaron. You can see a list of the labs at http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/labs.html.

Ah! Perfect, I remember this. Great textbook.

Thank you wdevanny

I think it originated at CMU. At Elon we had an automatic grader that gave limited amount of tries tied to your grade.

My grad school had the same auto grading and a scoreboard where you could see anonymously each others attempts and explosions. We did it as part of our Systems I class which was essentially an introduction to C and Assembly. I felt the point loss from blowing up was poorly thought out for at least an into type class. It makes it so that if you didn't do it perfectly the first few attempts there's actually a point where you can come out ahead by not finishing the assignment which just really bothered me as that seems exactly against any intended learning outcome from the lab.