Security is a skill you learn by doing. Reading about SQL injection is useful; finding one in a running application, under time pressure, with your team watching the scoreboard, is how it sticks. That is the idea behind Capture The Flag competitions, and it is why we built CTF7, our platform for cybersecurity CTFs, hackathons and hands-on labs.
In this post we explain what a CTF is, the formats you will come across, why we built CTF7, who uses it and how you can host your own event.
What Is a CTF?
A CTF, short for Capture The Flag, is a cybersecurity competition where participants solve security challenges to find hidden pieces of text called flags. A flag usually looks something like CTF7{This_is_an_example_flag}. Each flag proves you solved a real security problem, from breaking a weak cipher to exploiting a vulnerable web application, and submitting it earns points. A live leaderboard tracks every team's score, and the team with the most points at the end wins.
Most CTFs group their challenges into familiar categories:
- Web: application testing and exploitation, such as injection, authentication and logic flaws.
- Crypto: protocols, logic and cipher analysis.
- Reverse engineering: binary analysis and code recovery to understand how a program really works.
- Pwn (binary exploitation): memory corruption and exploitation against real binaries.
- Forensics: recovering evidence and hidden data from files, memory and network captures.
CTFs scale from beginner to expert, which makes them a great fit for students taking their first steps in security as well as for professionals who want to stay sharp.
Common CTF Formats
Not every CTF works the same way. The format shapes what participants learn:
- Jeopardy-style: a board of independent challenges grouped by category and point value. This is the most common format and the easiest to start with.
- Boot2Root: participants break into a vulnerable machine and escalate privileges until they own it.
- Attack-Defence: each team defends its own services while attacking everyone else's, which trains offensive and defensive skills at the same time.
- King of the Hill: players fight to gain and keep control of vulnerable machines, patching them to keep rivals out.
- Hiring CTFs: companies assess candidates on practical, role-relevant challenges instead of résumés alone.
CTF7 supports all of these, plus hackathons with mentors, judges and multiple rounds, and Learning Mission Labs for structured, guided practice. It also adds a report-driven mode called Raw Ops: instead of hunting for a flag, participants are dropped into a realistic target environment, find vulnerabilities and submit professional reports. It is much closer to real security research and bug bounty work.
Why We Built CTF7
Running a good CTF is hard. Organisers usually stitch together a registration form, a payment link, a scoring engine, challenge servers and a chat group. On event day, self-hosted frameworks can struggle under traffic spikes, and the organisers end up firefighting infrastructure instead of helping participants.
We wanted one dependable platform that handles the whole event lifecycle, so organisers can focus on great challenges and participants can focus on learning. CTF7 covers:
- Registration and teams: open, invite-only or paid entry, team size limits, and mentors and judges with limited permissions.
- Challenge delivery: static attachments, external resources and Docker-based challenge images.
- Fair play: dynamic flags generated for each participant, so copied flags do not score, plus anti-cheat monitoring with IP and browser tracking and submission logs.
- Live operations: an admin panel to upload challenges, pause rounds and track submissions, and a real-time scoreboard with rankings, solves and time taken.
- Your brand: custom event pages with your name, logo and theme colours.
- After the event: solve trends, leaderboard insights and report review to improve the next edition.
See the full list of CTF7 platform features.
Who Uses CTF7
CTF7 is built for anyone who runs or plays security events:
- Universities and student chapters running inter-college competitions, tech-fest CTFs and beginner practice events.
- Training teams and academies delivering hands-on labs and private training content.
- Cybersecurity communities and conferences hosting public CTFs and meetups.
- Companies using hiring CTFs to find people with demonstrable, hands-on skills.
According to CTF7, the platform offers more than 100 missions and 1,000 labs and works with more than 50 academic and community partners, including Black Hat India, IIT Jodhpur, National Forensic Sciences University, MIT World Peace University, the null community and BSides Indore. The Black Hat India 2026 Official CTF is scheduled on CTF7 for 28 November 2026.
How to Host a CTF on CTF7
Hosting an event follows six steps:
- Launch an event page with your branding, access rules and registration details.
- Design challenge tracks across web, crypto, reverse engineering, pwn and Raw Ops, or ask the CTF7 team for custom challenge development.
- Manage registration and teams, including fees, from one dashboard.
- Test the participant journey and challenge visibility before launch.
- Run the event live with real-time leaderboards, submission review and report triage.
- Review the outcomes, from solve trends to report quality, and improve the next event.
Plans start with a free event-hosting tier for up to 50 participants, and a Standard plan for larger events of up to 500 participants. Check the current CTF event hosting pricing for the latest plans for events, individual learners and organisations.
Get Started
If you are planning a CTF, hackathon or security training programme, you can host a CTF on CTF7 by telling the team about your event. If you want to play, get started free on CTF7 and browse the upcoming events. It's free to sign up.
To learn more about the platform and how it fits with the rest of our work, see our CTF7 product page.