Kubernetes Instance Manager Operator for CTF challenges

---

KIMO is a Kubernetes operator that provisions CTF challenges as containers, on demand, with a TTL-driven lifecycle, per-instance network isolation, PoW-based abuse prevention, and a pluggable backend layer for integrating with any scoring platform (a generic HMAC-webhook adapter out of the box, plus a CTFd adapter as a worked example).

See docs/kimo-design.md for the architecture, docs/kimo-roadmap.md for current project status, and docs/kimo-impl.md for the implementation plan.

Installation

Prerequisites: a Kubernetes cluster, kubectl, and Helm 3.

git clone https://github.com/kimo-ctf/kimo.git
cd kimo
helm install kimo helm/kimo/

This installs the CRDs and deploys the operator with the default generic scoring backend. To point it at a different backend instead:

helm install kimo helm/kimo/ -f config/samples/values-ctfd-backend.yaml

Backend selection and config live under integration.backend / integration.config in helm/kimo/values.yaml.

Quick start

Apply a sample challenge and watch it come up:

kubectl apply -f config/samples/web-sqli-template.yaml
kubectl get challengeinstance

The instance's status.phase moves through Pending -> Creating -> Running as its Pod passes its readiness check.

Development

No local toolchain required — hack/dev.sh runs Go/kubebuilder/Helm commands in a container, and hack/kind.sh runs a local kind cluster the same way. A VS Code devcontainer is also available under .devcontainer/.

hack/dev.sh go build ./...
hack/dev.sh go test ./...