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Upcoming Events

  • BSides Las Vegas

    When: AUG ?? 2026

    Pros: Registration not open yet

    Joes: Registration not open yet

    Register

  • BSides New York

    When: OCT 18 2025

    Pros: Registration open!

    Joes: Registration open!

    Register

  • BSides Delaware

    When: NOV 14 2025

    Pros: Registration not open yet

    Joes: Registration not open yet

    Register

What is Pros Versus Joes?

Our events are an opportunity for average users (Joes) to try their hand at the offensive and defensive side of computer security. For the Pro's, it's a chance to hone and show off their skills, while also helping others to learn and better themselves. Joes are split up into teams, each with two Pro captains, and given their own network to defend against the Pros in our Red Cell. Each Blue network is full of servers and desktops running Windows, Linux, your standard services like DNS, Web, Mail, and a few surprises. The second half of each game takes the Blues to Purple, giving them the chance to break into the other teams' systems for fame and glory. Players need only a laptop to connect to the environment with. Laptops are not in the line of fire.

  • For the Joes

    Our events are an opportunity for average users (Joes) to try their hand at the offensive and defensive side of computer security.

    See our guide for Joes

  • For the Pros

    For the Pro's, it's a chance to hone and show off their skills, while also helping others to learn and better themselves.

    What we need from Pros

About the Game

Joes are split up into teams, each with two Pro captains, and given their own network to defend against the Pros in our Red Cell. Each Blue network is full of servers and desktops running Windows, Linux, your standard services like DNS, Web, Mail, and a few surprises.

The second half of each game takes the Blues to Purple, giving them the chance to break into the other teams' systems for fame and glory. Players need only a laptop to connect to the environment with. Laptops are not in the line of fire.

The Pros V Joes's Scorebot software is the heart of the ProsVJoes CTF and has recently undergone a complete rewrite. Designed from the ground up for the unique offense/defense style of play, it has grown along with the game and has become even better than ever with all of the new changes.

It's capabilities include (obviously) scoring the game, monitoring scored services for uptime, tracking flags and submissions, receiving beacons from assets compromised by Red Cell, and interacing with a ticketing system that the Blue Teams receive tasks from. As of BSidesLV 2017, the game now also features the economics portion, where Blue TEams can spend their points on advntages and assets that will help them win the game! Even Red Cell can get into the action!

An open source project, we welcome pull requests with contributions.

There are multiple teams involved in most games.

  • Blue Team: The Joes and the Blue Team captains (Pros)
  • Red Team: Pros either working in, or specializing in, offense
  • Grey Team: Emulating user behavior, using the systems deployed in the game - Sometimes these are Pros, sometimes these are Joes
  • Gold Team: Infrastructure and game support; effectively running the game

Player Experiences

Notes, blogs, videos, and stories from previous games.

Blue Team

Red Cell

UNDER CONSTRUCTON

This site is a port of the current http://prosversusjoes.net/ and will be updated over time for 2025's events. Check back in the near future for registration links, informaton, and more!