Integrating AI tools into cyber team assessments: Wins & use cases for CTFs

We believe in learning by doing. Facing real-world challenges hands-on, with real tools and tactics used in the industry.

Now, we’re leveling up that mission with pioneering features that bridge AI and cyber team assessment, starting from Capture The Flag (CTF) competitions, using a dedicated MCP Server.

From today, all CTF players and HTB community members can connect their favorite AI tools simply by generating a personal token, while admins have full control to toggle and enable MCP for any team exercise.

But why does this matter now?

The reality is many cybersecurity professionals already lean on AI in their workflows. A recent community survey found nearly two-thirds of HTB players (63%) use AI tools like ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot in their daily tasks.

MCP is the answer to seamlessly embed HTB into these AI-native workflows by standardizing how AI agents or LLMs interact with our platforms, and transforming how people learn and compete.

The final outcome is to augment skills without replacing human ingenuity and create an AI-resilient workforce, rather than viewing AI solely as a way to break CTF logic or as a task solver.

HTB MCP is now available for all teams

Traditionally, if you wanted an AI application (like a chatbot or an automated script) to interact with CTF challenges, you’d have to build custom integrations for each action or data source. Think of MCP as a bridge between AI applications and the HTB CTF platform.

This means your AI tools can list events, query challenge details, retrieve live scores, start/stop challenge instances, and even submit flags—all through one consistent interface. This becomes even easier and completely self-served with our latest releases:

• Token generation: Any user can generate their own personal MCP token straight from their Profile Settings. You can plug it into supported tools like Claude, a ChatGPT plugin, or our VS Code extension to let your AI assistant query and interact with CTF challenges. Tokens are tied to your account, and you retain full control so you can regenerate or revoke them anytime if needed.

• MCP toggle: We recognize that not every competition or training session will want AI assistance enabled. Every CTF event’s settings now include an MCP Enable/Disable toggle, which is off by default. This setting gives instructors, team managers, and competition hosts fine-grained control over AI involvement.

With these two features teams get freedom to experiment, while admins get peace of mind and oversight. Hack The Box is essentially providing the infrastructure to include AI in our platform, without forcing it on anyone who isn’t ready for it.

Seamless integration with AI-native workflows

As mentioned, one of the core advantages of MCP is how it meets users where they already are. A growing number of security professionals (and cybercriminals!) are using AI in everyday tasks, and now those same assistants can become teammates in your CTF journey.

In a recent internal event, participants connected AI models like Claude and GPT-4 to the MCP Server and let them loose on challenges. The AI served as a co-pilot: it brainstormed approaches, decoded cryptographic clues, and even handled grunt work like scanning and code analysis—all while the human remained the decision-maker.

This seamless integration has huge implications for productivity and realism.

Teams can bring the same automation and tooling from their day jobs into the CTF arena (red teamers might integrate their custom exploit frameworks or OSINT tools, blue teamers could connect threat-hunting scripts or SIEM queries in a defensive lab scenario, and so on).

MCP provides a standardized way to plug modern capabilities into competitions, making CTFs a closer mirror of real-world security operations. The end result is a more dynamic and innovative playing field: you’re free to experiment with AI agents and scripts as part of your strategy, just as you would in actual cyber operations.

Lowering entry barriers with AI-augmented skills development

Perhaps the most profound impact of MCP is how it lowers the floor for newcomers. AI integration is changing that game as we speak.

With an AI co-pilot available, a beginner who might not know where to start on a reversing challenge can ask the AI for hints, get an explanation of a stack trace, or even receive step-by-step reasoning to approach the problem. It turns CTF solving into more of a guided learning experience rather than a solo trial-and-error grind.

AI tools can act as a skills augmenter for beginners. It provides the scaffolding and accelerates the learning curve: tasks that used to require months of study can now be learned in days with AI guidance.

Plus, attackers and adversaries are actively using AI to conduct more sophisticated attacks – why should we keep playing in an uneven field?

AI can accelerate the journey, but it doesn’t replace the need for teamwork and insight. MCP is designed to enhance human capabilities, not as cheat code. Elite hackers continue to be limited only by their creativity and knowledge, and now even have more sophisticated tools to experiment with.

Governance and visibility for teams and instructors

With the rapid rise of AI tools in the workplace, many organizations are grappling with the challenge of “Shadow AI”: Unauthorized, unmanaged use of generative AI systems by employees.

This not only creates potential data leakage and compliance risks, but also leads to inconsistent training outcomes and a lack of visibility for team leads and educators. MCP addresses this head-on by offering a centralized, secure way to enable AI within cybersecurity training environments.

Instead of having users connect their own scripts or models directly to the HTB platform in ad hoc ways, MCP provides a single, secured endpoint through which all AI interactions flow.

In short, MCP gives teams a secure, auditable, and controlled framework to embrace AI responsibly. It empowers organizations to balance innovation with accountability, and ensures that AI becomes a strategic asset, not a shadow threat.

Empowering hackers, educators, red teamers, and enterprises

The beauty of the MCP Server is that it offers something for every stakeholder in the cybersecurity community. Let’s look at a few perspectives:

• Individual learners or practitioners: For solo players, MCP is like having an AI assistant or tutor by your side 24/7. By connecting their favorite tools directly to HTB, individuals can turn CTFs into an interactive, guided experience. The result is faster skill growth and a more inclusive community where even newcomers can make significant progress.

• Educators and Instructors: Teachers and mentors can harness MCP to enrich cybersecurity curricula. In a classroom or workshop setting, instructors might enable MCP-based hints or automated feedback for students. And when it comes time to test raw skills, they can simply toggle off the AI. MCP empowers educators to strike a balance between teaching and testing, using AI as a scalable teaching assistant.

• Red teamers and advanced professionals: MCP opens up a playground for innovation. Red teamers can integrate their internal tools or AI models with HTB challenges to prototype new attack techniques. It doesn’t replace human red teamers, but it augments them – automating the low-level tasks so the humans can focus on creative, high-level maneuvers. For blue teams, similarly, MCP could help simulate AI-augmented defense.
  
  

• Enterprises and security managers: Organizations can run internal CTFs or cyber ranges where AI assistance is easily available to the entire team. The net effect is a more confident, AI-augmented workforce by incorporating the HTB MCP into their existing tooling securely.

Get started: Build your AI-enhanced CTF

MCP is live and ready for you to try! Log in to your Hack The Box account and navigate to your Profile Settings, then find the MCP Access tab. 

There, you can generate your personal MCP token with one click. Copy that token and keep it safe (you’ll only see it once!). Now, take that token and integrate it with an AI tool or environment of your choice.

As you venture into AI-augmented CTFs, we encourage you to share your experiences with the community. We believe this is the future of cybersecurity resilience—a blend of human capabilities and machine intelligence—and we’re eager to enable teams to take advantage of it.

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