2025 • Cybersecurity / Competition

ISEAGE CTF Competition

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2nd Place
National CDC
Out of 20 teams (Dec 2024)
Top 20
International CDC
Out of 40 teams (Feb 2025)
Blue Team
Defense Role
Active Directory lead
Featured
Media Coverage
Iowa 132d Wing video
ISEAGE CTF Competition
01

Competition Overview

Drake's Cyber Club is still new to the scene and was essentially founded within the 2024-2025 academic year. During this time, I was part of the small group that participated and brought Drake to its first attempt at ISEAGE.

In October 2024, we competed in our first ISEAGE competition. While we placed fairly low in the field, our goal was to learn and come back stronger. To start 2025, we participated in the International ISEAGE CDC on February 22nd, 2025.

On December 6th, 2025, we placed 2nd out of 20 teams in the National ISEAGE CDC. Building on that success, we competed in the International ISEAGE CDC on February 22nd, 2025, placing in the top 20 out of 40 teams from the US, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Albania. Our team was featured in the Iowa 132d Wing's official cybersecurity competition coverage video.

02

My Role

Active Directory Security

Led all AD-related security, implementing enhanced Kerberos encryption and strict group policies.

Domain Controller Hardening

Secured RDP access with NLA, disabled insecure protocols, and protected against pass-the-hash attacks.

User Role Management

Established proper segregation of duties across roles including CEO, IT Admins, and HR personnel.

Attack Mitigation

Detected and removed Kerberos Keystealer malware and eliminated malicious processes.

03

Technical Stack

Network Security

OPNsense Firewall
Network Segmentation Zone isolation
IDS/IPS Threat detection
Traffic Analysis Monitoring

Windows Security

Active Directory Domain services
Group Policy Security config
Kerberos AES 256 encryption
Windows Defender Endpoint protection

Incident Response

Event Logging Forensic analysis
LDAP Security Credential protection
SMB Signing Protocol hardening
RDP with NLA Secure remote access
04

Technical Challenges

Legacy System Hardening

Challenge: Hardening Windows Server 2016 and other legacy systems without breaking critical functionality required for the competition scoring system.

Solution: Upgraded Kerberos encryption from RC4 to AES 128/256, reduced key expiration times, and applied security patches incrementally while testing service availability.

Real-time Attack Mitigation

Challenge: Coordinating responses to simultaneous attacks across multiple systems while maintaining service uptime under extreme pressure.

Solution: Detected and removed Kerberos Keystealer malware from the domain controller, eliminated malicious runtimebroker.exe impersonator, and established continuous monitoring.

Network Segmentation

Challenge: Implementing effective network segmentation for critical services while ensuring all required communication paths remained functional.

Solution: Configured OPNsense firewall with zone-based policies, implemented strict ingress/egress rules, and established monitoring for lateral movement attempts.

05

Lessons Learned

"Participating in ISEAGE provided invaluable hands-on experience in defending real infrastructure against active adversaries. The pressure of the competition environment taught me more in one day than weeks of classroom theory."

01

Defense-in-depth strategies are critical for comprehensive security posture

02

Proper documentation enables efficient incident response under pressure

03

Continuous monitoring is essential for early threat detection

04

Clear team communication is vital during active security events

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ISEAGE Competition

Official website

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ISU ISEAGE

Iowa State program

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132d Wing Video

Competition coverage

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