What is HostYourCTF?

It is a Capture The Flag framework based on CTFd focusing on ease of use and customizability. It comes with everything you need to run a CTF and it's easy to customize with plugins and themes.

Features

• Create your own challenges, categories, hints, and flags from the Admin Interface
  • Dynamic Scoring Challenges
  • Unlockable challenge support
  • Challenge plugin architecture to create your own custom challenges
  • Static & Regex based flags
    • Custom flag plugins
  • Unlockable hints
  • File uploads to the server or an Amazon S3-compatible backend
  • Limit challenge attempts & hide challenges
  • Automatic bruteforce protection
• Individual and Team based competitions
  • Have users play on their own or form teams to play together
• Scoreboard with automatic tie resolution
  • Hide Scores from the public
  • Freeze Scores at a specific time
• Scoregraphs comparing the top 10 teams and team progress graphs
• Markdown content management system
• SMTP + Mailgun email support
  • Email confirmation support
  • Forgot password support
• Automatic competition starting and ending
• Team management, hiding, and banning
• Importing and Exporting of CTF data for archival

Install

1. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
   1. You can also use the prepare.sh script to install system dependencies using apt.
2. Modify HostYourCTF/config.ini to your liking.
3. Use python serve.py or flask run in a terminal to drop into debug mode.

You can use the auto-generated Docker images with the following command:

docker run -p 8000:8000 -it ctfd/ctfd

Or you can use Docker Compose with the following command from the source repository:

docker compose up

Credits

Deployment to Azure

1. Create a Resource Group

az group create --name ctfd-test-rg --location centralindia

2. Deploy Azure Container Instance (ACI)

Replace <image_tag> with latest or your specific version (e.g., v2).

az container create \
  --resource-group ctfd-test-rg \
  --name ctfd-test \
  --image prafullanand/ctfd:<image_tag> \
  --ports 8000 \
  --dns-name-label ctfdtest$RANDOM \
  --location centralindia \
  --os-type Linux \
  --cpu 1 \
  --memory 1.5

3. Get the Public URL

az container show --resource-group ctfd-test-rg --name ctfd-test --query ipAddress.fqdn -o tsv

4. Manage Your Deployment

Change CPU or Memory: You must delete and recreate the container group to resize:

az container delete --resource-group ctfd-test-rg --name ctfd-test --yes
# Re-run Create command with new --cpu or --memory values

Pause/Stop (Save Credits): ACI billing continues as long as the container exists. Delete it to stop billing:

az container delete --resource-group ctfd-test-rg --name ctfd-test --yes

Restart or View Logs:

az container restart --resource-group ctfd-test-rg --name ctfd-test
az container logs --resource-group ctfd-test-rg --name ctfd-test

Check Status:

az container show --resource-group ctfd-test-rg --name ctfd-test --query instanceView.state

5. Update Challenge Scripts

After deployment, update your import_challenges.py with the new URL:

sed -i 's|CTFd_URL = ".*"|CTFd_URL = "http://<your-public-azure-url>:8000/"|' import_challenges.py
sed -i 's|ADMIN_TOKEN = ".*"|ADMIN_TOKEN = "ctfd_NEW_TOKEN"|' import_challenges.py