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From 19-21 April 2023 the Cyber Team competed in the National Security Agency’s annual National Cyber Exercise (NCX) and placed third against other service academies and senior military colleges. Multiple four-person CGA teams competed in such areas as data analysis, digital forensics, reverse engineering, and policy. The event concluded on the final day with the six hour Cyber Combat Exercise, “live-fire” attack and defense event.

During 20-22 January 2023, 15 cadets from the CGA Cyber Team traveled to Washington, DC to learn, compete, and network at the Shmoocon 2023 Cybersecurity Conference. Cyber Team cadets attended keynote presentations, networked with CGCYBER Officers and industry processionals, and studied and competed in a variety of technical fields including reverse engineering, cryptography, and RFID exploitation. Some notable cadet achievements from the conference are:

• A team of underclass cadets were the first-place finishers of the Clarity Cybersecurity Cryptography Challenge, finishing the challenges hours before any other team in attendance did.
• 1/c Campbell worked collaboratively with prior CG Cyber officers to solve the RET2 Systems reverse engineering challenge, a prestigious and notable reverse engineering puzzle that no CGA cadet has solved in three years.

Members of the CGA Cyber Team participated in the National Cyber League Fall 2022 Individual and Team Competitions, measuring skills in a wide variety of cyber disciplines ranging from web application hacking to digital forensics, cryptography, and reverse engineering. Underclass team members led the way in the individual competition, with our top scoring cadet (3/c Fulbright) finishing in the top 4% out of over 6,500 competitors across the country. In the team competition, a mixed team of upperclass and underclass cadets finished in a similar top tier of teams.

This is the premier competition of the fall semester. The top 06 cadets from the USCGA Cyber Team traveled to Chicago to compete in a “live-fire” scenario against over 165 teams from over 150 of the top cybersecurity collegiate programs in the country in the 7th Annual DOE CyberForce Competition. Cadets competed categories such as developing secure web infrastructure from scratch, integrating enterprise IT systems and assessing security, carrying out network and host-based forensic analysis of attacks, and documenting five threat hunting and incident response scenarios in a time-constrained setting. In the first year of competing, and out of over 165 teams, the CGA Cyber Team finished 13th place overall and bested all military academies and senior military colleges in attendance, as well as many other well-known collegiate cyber programs.