DEF CON Hacking Conference

Call for DEF CON Capture the Flag Organizers (CFO)

2025-10-09

Do you want to help revolutionize CTF competitions?

The Nautilus Institute is retiring after an outstanding four years running the DEF CON Capture the Flag competition. This leaves a brief opening for a crew with the right vision and skills to seize control of the world's premier CTF and chart the future of the sport.

To the chosen team we offer:

• The freedom to innovate and put your stamp on the contest. You you design the network topology, you make the rules, you decide who wins. We want you to make something we've never seen before. In fact, we insist on it.
• Badges to DEF CON for the organizers.
• Accommodations for the organizers at one of our hotel partners.
• Promotion Support: we encourage sharing hints and clues via social media, in our signage and programs, on our website. Let us know what you have in mind and we'll work with you to make it happen.
• Material support : Space, networking gear, money for basic costs. The budget isn't unlimited, but we'll partner with you to realize your vision.
• Prizes for the winners, up to 8 Black Badges (free entry to DEF CON for life) and up to 8 custom DCCTF leather jackets.
• The glory of being eternally linked to CTF giants like Nautilus Institute, Ghetto Hackers, LegitBS, Order of the Overflow and The People.
• The thanks of a grateful community.

There are, of course, some rules.

You MUST:

• The contest must include head to head combat, offense and defense, not just jeopardy style, with a multitude of real world skills needed to be successful.
• The competing teams will need to come from a mix of pre-qualification and pre-determined CTF contest winners.
• No less than 10 teams, no more than 20 due to physical space constraints, with space for 8 players at a time.
• Take into consideration how to make the contest interesting to spectators.
• Clearly be able to explain how scoring works and be as transparent as possible.
• Provide pcaps of the contest that will be shared with the community.
• The contest must end no later than 15:00 Sunday at DEF CON in order to provide time for final scoring and the awards ceremony, you would need to determine the winning team by 16:00 Sunday evening. 

You MUST NOT:

• Interfere with the DEF CON networks (CTF must be a separate network), the 'live Internet', or involve non-consensual parties (i.e. anyone who hasn't explicitly agreed to take part in the contests)
• Take sides, you must be totally neutral and fair.
• Be a black box. You don't have to give away your secret sauce source code, but you must be transparent to build credibility and prevent a result from being cast into doubt.
• Harm the reputation the CTF contest by cheapening the experience through gimmicks. Treat the experience with respect.

When you submit, we'll get in touch to clarify what we don't understand. We'll also be happy to offer guidance and answer your questions. You won't be required to do this alone—we're committed to making the best version of your ideas into reality. We can even connect you with some of the past CTF organizers for some practical advice.

We will work out details over the phone, participating in your game creation (not interfering with it, just ensuring everything is going smoothly). We will conference call with you and may fly you out for an in-person meeting with us to discuss planning for the event. Primary & secondary contacts will also be added to an official DEF CON CTF planning project on Basecamp to coordinate with us. We will use the email addresses you included on your application (unless stated otherwise).

We recommend that you get familiar with the previous CTF organizers and past contests to get the lay of the land. There's a list of links at the bottom of this page to get you on your way.

So you want to build a game? Welcome!

Fill out the application below. You will receive an acknowledgment that your submission was received within three business days of us receiving it unless we are snowed in and the interwebs are broke. If you don't hear back, something went wrong so try reaching out again. Some servers pick on us, please whitelist *@defcon.org.

We will use relatively simple criteria to judge your entry:

• Has your team done this before? Are you mostly players, organizers, or a mix of both?
• Feasibility of your team pulling it off, taking into consideration who is involved in your team, resources you have, ambition of your 1st year vision.
• The amount of fun we imagine the participants will have with your contest.
• Does winning your contest represent real elite hacking skills, or efficient automation?
• How does your concept embrace DEF CON as the "World Championship" of CTF idea?
• The coolness or innovation you bring to the contests.
• Respect your team has for the DEF CON community at large. Your team's reputation should also be in good with our community's code of conduct.

APPLICATION:

All contact information will be kept private, and not disclosed outside the DEF CON planning organization.

• Name of your organization:
• Name of primary contact:
• Email Address of Primary contact:
• Phone number of Primary contact:
• Social Media of Primary contact:
• Email, phone and social media of your Backup contact:
• Are you affiliated with a company, and if so will the company influence or control your work? How?
• The number of people in your organization that will actively be participating in creating the CTF.
• Who are the team members?
• Experience the team members have had in planning events, and CTF participation experience.
• Technical ability of your team. This would include a general list of people's abilities such as networking, hardware, web app, reversing, etc. and support the idea you can pull this off.
• Physical resources, if any, that you will be bringing to help run CTF such as a disco ball, robots or enigma machines to help us plan to accommodate it with the hotel if you require extra power or special fire marshal approval.
• Please disclose any possible conflicts of interest.

EXPLAIN YOUR VISION:

Explain in a general manner, your vision for the CTF.

• Talk about your motivation for wanting to put in thousands of hours and take the risk of organizing the DEF CON CTF.
• Explain how you hope the contestants will experience it. For example do they sign up on-line, get a secret package in the mail, start blindfolded with an unusual laptop? Are there certain crisis points you will introduce during the game to confuse or add to the pressure?
• How do players or teams qualify?
• Is it multi player or single-player, or a combination?
• What innovations or new ideas are you bringing to CTF?
• How long will the contest take, will it be 24x7, 8 hour shifts, etc.?
• Explain what you believe is the best way to gauge a hacker's abilities, and how your vision of the contest could do this?
• What technical work is required to execute your plan. This includes setting up environments beforehand, pre-qualification work if any, writing a scoring system, etc.?
• Give an outline of the rules that will be presented to the participants:
• What hardware resources do you request or need from DEF CON?
• Tell us anything else that you think may be important or that we might consider in choosing your group to host CTF.

SEND 'EM IN!

The submission deadline is November 15, 2025. Email Submissions to ctf [at] defcon [d0t] org

If you need to encrypt it please use DTs keys from here:
Dark Tangent Page
Dark Tangent Page Onion link

New announcements will be on the main DEFCON web site as well:
https://www.defcon.org/

Thank you!

- The Dark Tangent