Run the official competition at your security conference
From the Black Hat India Official CTF to BSides Indore, security conferences run their official competition and village on CTF7. You get a projector-ready scoreboard, hybrid on-site and online play, passes and check-in, and a team that runs operations while you run the conference. The same platform runs booth CTFs on the expo floor and community events for security vendors.
Events and institutions that host on CTF7
A conference competition runs once, in front of everyone
Your event happens once a year, in front of your whole community and your sponsors. Wi-Fi is shared, the schedule is packed, and the CTF has to work the moment the keynote ends.
Load spikes
Hundreds of attendees log in at once after the opening talk. CTF7 hosts and scales the platform, with managed containers on Premium.
Mixed skill levels
Students, pentesters and CISOs in one room. Tiered challenges and hints keep everyone playing.
Thin volunteer crews
Your volunteers run the halls. Premium adds full setup by our team and dedicated technical support for the competition.
Prizes on the line
Dynamic flags and advanced anti-cheat logs make sure the winners on stage earned it.
What a conference village needs
Projector-ready live scoreboard
Put the real-time scoreboard on the main-hall screen: rankings, points, solves and time taken, updating live. It turns the CTF into something the whole venue watches, and a visible reminder to sign up next year.
Hybrid play
Run on-site and online players in the same event, so remote community members compete alongside attendees.
King of the Hill for live audiences
Teams fight for control of a shared box and the crown changes hands on screen. King of the Hill is easy for a crowd to follow. It is a managed event: our team builds the hills and runs the round, quoted separately.
Ticketing, passes & check-in
Delegate passes, workshop RSVPs and door check-in can run on CTF7 next to the competition, so attendees register once. The full feature list is on event hosting.
Sponsor challenges
Give sponsors a challenge or a whole category built around their product or theme by our challenge development team. Players spend twenty minutes inside the sponsor's problem instead of walking past a banner, and an exhibitor can take it further with a booth CTF at their stand.
Event-day operations
Full setup by our team, challenge hosting and dedicated technical support on Premium, with your custom domain and branded certificates.
Conference CTF formats
Most conferences combine a jeopardy CTF that runs all day with a short, loud final.
Booth and exhibition CTFs: on-site, online or hybrid
A booth CTF is a short, drop-in Capture The Flag that an exhibitor, a sponsor or the conference itself runs at a stand on the expo floor. Visitors sign up on the spot, solve quick challenges and watch their name climb the screen at the booth. CTF7 runs the same event in person, online or both at once.
Every player is at the venue, on their own laptop or on kiosk machines you set up at the stand. The live scoreboard runs on the booth screen, announcements call out the leaders, and winners are picked at fixed times, such as the close of each expo day. CTF7 is a hosted platform, so "offline" here means in person, not without internet. Tell us about the venue network early so kiosks get a reliable wired or dedicated wireless connection.
- Booth-screen scoreboard
- Kiosks or own laptops
- Check-in at the stand
- Daily winners
For virtual exhibitions, pre-conference warm-ups and community members who can't travel. Registration, challenges and the scoreboard all live on your branded event page, and announcements keep remote players informed. An online round also works as a warm-up for the main event: you can invite the top teams to an invite-only on-site final.
- Branded event page
- Open or invite-only registration
- Announcements
- Online warm-up round
Booth visitors and remote players compete in the same event, with the scoreboard setup agreed with us in advance. This suits conferences that stream their talks: the online audience gets something to do, and the expo floor still gets the crowd around the screen. Decide early whether on-site and online players compete for the same prizes, and put it in your CTF rules.
- One event, two audiences
- Agreed scoreboard setup
- Clear prize rules
- Same challenge set
Designing a booth CTF that draws a crowd
A booth CTF is not a shrunk-down village. Visitors give you five to fifteen minutes between talks, sometimes on a phone, so challenge length, onboarding and prizes matter more than difficulty. For challenge themes that suit short sessions, see our challenge ideas.
- One link to play. Print the registration link as a QR code on the standee so visitors are solving before they reach the table.
- Short, themed challenges. A starter challenge anyone can solve, then a ladder of puzzles built around the exhibitor's theme by our challenge development team.
- Hints for first-timers. Hints, which can cost points, keep non-specialists playing instead of walking away.
- Fair prizes. When a queue shares one stand, dynamic flags and anti-cheat monitoring (Standard and Premium) stop one visitor's flag from working for the next. See how dynamic flags work.
- A simple scoring rule. Static points are easy to explain at a booth; dynamic scoring rewards the rare solves. Compare both in our CTF scoring guide.
- Something to show afterwards. Post-event analytics on solve trends and leaderboard insights give exhibitors a picture of how visitors engaged.
Run your vendor community CTF on CTF7
Some security vendors run a branded community CTF as part of developer relations: a free-to-play, recurring event that teaches the problem their product solves and gives the community a reason to come back each year.
A vendor CTF works best when the challenges carry your brand and the platform stays out of the way. On CTF7 you brand the event page, collect registrations and run the scoreboard, and your team spends its time on the challenges.
Talk to the event teamChallenges in your domain
Our challenge development service designs, builds and tests challenges around the class of problem your product addresses, so playing teaches your story without turning into an ad.
Your brand, your domain
Custom branding with your name, logo, theme colors and custom pages. Premium adds a custom domain with managed SSL.
Room for a global crowd
Premium includes unlimited participants and managed container deployment. On Standard, you bring your own Docker challenge images, for up to 500 participants.
A leaderboard people trust
Dynamic flags, IP and browser tracking, alerts and submission logs, with advanced anti-cheat analytics on Premium, so the prize winners are the real winners.
After the event
Post-event analytics, branded certificates on Premium, and a clear record of results for sponsors and attendees. See current CTF7 events.
Community and hiring
Co-host with clubs and hacker collectives through our Community Partner program, or turn top players into candidates with a hiring CTF.
Before you announce the date: pick a cadence (an annual flagship or smaller quarterly rounds), a team size, a policy on AI assistants and when solutions go public. If you want global teams to find it, list the event on CTFtime.
Conference CTF run of show
How a typical two-day conference CTF comes together.
8–6 weeks out: Scope and sponsors
Agree on format, prize pool, audience mix and which sponsors want their own challenges. Decide whether online players can join.
6–3 weeks out: Build, brand, register
Challenges are built and playtested, the branded event page goes live on your domain, and registration opens alongside conference passes.
Day 1: Doors open
Attendees check in, the scoreboard goes up on the big screen and the jeopardy CTF runs all day while announcements go out between sessions.
Day 2: The final
Top teams play a King of the Hill or attack-defense final in front of the audience, run by our team as a managed event. Anti-cheat logs are reviewed before winners are announced on stage.
After: Results and certificates
Publish final rankings, issue branded certificates and share solve analytics with your sponsors.
Trusted by India's security conferences
The Black Hat India Official CTF runs on CTF7. BSides Indore and the null community host on CTF7 too.
Past and upcoming competitions are listed on the CTF7 events page.
Premium
For official conference CTFs and multi-day events
- Setup and challenge hosting by our team
- Custom domain & managed SSL
- Unlimited participants
- Managed container deployment
- Advanced anti-cheat analytics & logs
- Branded certificates & dedicated technical support
Will it work on conference Wi-Fi?
Yes, as long as players can reach the internet. CTF7 is hosted by us and challenge labs run in the cloud, so nothing runs on the venue network. It also means that if the venue's internet is down, the CTF is down for the players.
- Players need a working internet connection. They play from a browser and reach labs over the internet. Nothing is installed or hosted at the venue.
- Give the organizer desk its own uplink. A wired connection or a second ISP line for the laptop that runs the event and the projector scoreboard means the people running the CTF can still announce and pause when attendee Wi-Fi is struggling.
- Many players can use their own mobile data. A hotspot is a reasonable fallback for a few people, and it keeps load off the venue access points. Say so in the opening announcement.
- Launch labs when needed. Challenge labs start on demand, so ask players to start one when they reach that challenge, not all together when the keynote ends.
- If the network drops, pause the round. Organizers can pause an event and post an announcement to all participants, so no one loses time to an outage you could see coming.
- Tell us about the venue early. Share the expected player count and the connectivity you have, and we will plan the round with you.
What a sponsor can get from a CTF7 event
Give your sponsors something to point to afterwards. These are the deliverables you can offer from the event.
Logo on the event page
Events have a sponsors section, so a sponsor's logo sits on the public event page that players and visitors open.
Branded certificates
Participants and winners receive certificates with your branding on them (branded certificates are on Premium).
A sponsored challenge or track
A challenge or a whole category built around the sponsor's product or theme, written by our challenge development team.
Access to opted-in finishers
A sponsor that is a hiring partner can reach players who have turned on open to work, through the hiring partner route. Players decide whether they are visible.
Tips for a CTF village that fills up
Six decisions that change how many attendees play and how long they stay.
Compare CTF formats- Put the scoreboard where people walk. A screen near registration or the coffee area recruits more players than any announcement.
- Design for 20-minute sessions. Attendees play between talks. Include plenty of challenges that can be solved in one break.
- Staff a help desk. Two volunteers helping first-timers set up tools turns spectators into players. Point them to our CTF tools guide.
- Announce early solves. Short updates between sessions keep the competition visible all day.
- Save the drama for the end. A short King of the Hill or attack-defense final on stage gives the conference a closing moment. Book it early: our team runs both as managed events.
- Plan for the venue network. See what the platform needs from venue Wi-Fi and tell us about wired access early.
Plan the CTF village for your conference
Send the date, the venue and the expected crowd, along with what you know about the network. We reply with a run of show and a quote.
