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THE SIGN 2.0 Hackathon: CASCADE Critical Infrastructure CTF. Press Release

Teams from Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States and Italy competed in a six-hour exercise built on real attack scenarios against critical infrastructure.

On 29 October 2026, Innovation Center Digitaliza Madrid hosted THE SIGN 2.0 Hackathon CASCADE – Critical Infrastructure CTF, a full-day Capture the Flag exercise. The event brought together 27 cybersecurity professionals and students from Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States and Italy.

Participants of THE SIGN 2.0 Hackathon: CASCADE Critical Infrastructure CTF, Digitaliza Madrid, 29 October 2026

Over approximately six hours, teams worked through hands-on challenges across energy, water and utilities, transport and public services. The scenarios were inspired by real, documented attacks on critical infrastructure and drew on genuine malware behaviour, network traffic and forensic evidence, with operators, facilities and locations anonymised.

Teams at work during CASCADE Critical Infrastructure CTF

Participants working through the CASCADE challenges

The exercise ran in a Jeopardy-style format with automated scoring and a live scoreboard. Participants' skills were assessed before and after the event against the NIST NICE framework.

Results

1st place: a joint team of specialists from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Airbus and Secture.

1st place: joint team of specialists from UPM, Airbus and Secture

2nd place: HWG Sababa (Italy)

3rd place: a team of students of Telecommunications Engineering and Cybersecurity

3rd place: team of students of Telecommunications Engineering and Cybersecurity

The podium reflected the mix of the field: industry, academia and the startup ecosystem, with a student team among the top three.

Experience from Ukraine

The scenarios drew on attacks observed against Ukrainian critical infrastructure, the most heavily targeted operational environment in Europe. The Ukrainian side was represented by Cyber Unit Technologies, Unit Range and the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (SSSCIP).

Serhii Ustymenko, Minister-Counselor, Embassy of Ukraine in the Kingdom of Spain

The institutional opening included Serhii Ustymenko, Minister-Counselor of the Embassy of Ukraine in the Kingdom of Spain.

"Ukraine's experience in resisting Russian aggression is an important contribution to building a new European security architecture. Supporting Ukraine today means contributing to common security, stability and lasting peace across the whole continent. Critical infrastructure is no longer the quiet background of our societies. It is the front line. Ukraine knows this not from theory, but from daily practice. Ukraine does not keep this knowledge to itself. We share it, deliberately and generously, because the security of our partners is inseparable from our own," — Serhii Ustymenko, Minister-Counselor, Embassy of Ukraine in the Kingdom of Spain

Institutional support

The Spanish Space Agency (AEE) supported the event and opened it through GB Enrique Fernández Ambel, Director of the Dirección de Seguridad y Planificación. The link between the ground and orbit segments was a theme of the day, as space systems depend on the terrestrial infrastructure that supports them.

GB Enrique Fernández Ambel, Director, Dirección de Seguridad y Planificación, Spanish Space Agency (AEE)

"Space systems are only as secure as the terrestrial infrastructure that supports them: ground stations, energy supply and communications networks. Protecting critical infrastructure is therefore part of protecting our space capabilities. Practical exercises such as CASCADE give specialists the opportunity to work under realistic conditions on the kind of threats they may face, and that experience cannot be replaced by theory alone," — GB Enrique Fernández Ambel, Director, Dirección de Seguridad y Planificación, Spanish Space Agency (AEE)

Panel “Securing Critical Infrastructure, from Ground to Orbit”, moderated by Tatiana Skydan (THE SIGN), with speakers from Cyber Unit Tech & Unit Range, SSSCIP and IOActive

EASM: See What Others Don't, presentation at CASCADE Critical Infrastructure CTF, Digitaliza Madrid

Technical leadership

The exercise was designed and run by the Unit Range team. Anastasiia Loban, Product Manager at Unit Range, was responsible for the event end to end, from concept and scenario design to the pre- and post-event skills assessment and the analytical report that follows. Kyrylo Yurkovskyi, Technical Lead at Unit Range, ran exercise control on the day. He oversaw the platform and challenge environments, scoring operations and incident handling, and led the closing technical walkthrough of selected challenges.

On the technical side, Gabriel González (IOActive), Manuel Cortes Garcia (Universidad de Salamanca) and Pablo Asenjo (SPSIN) contributed as tech leads. They guided teams on the floor, supported the technical walkthrough and reviewed challenges. Together with the Unit Range team, they kept support for participants consistent without giving away solutions.

Organisers and partners of CASCADE Critical Infrastructure CTF, Digitaliza Madrid

About the organisers

CASCADE was produced by Cyber Unit Tech and Unit Range, THE SIGN.MEDIA, with the support of the Cybersecurity Agency of the Community of Madrid, the Spanish Space Agency (AEE), and the Embassy of Ukraine in the Kingdom of Spain. Ecosystem partners – RCC.Advisory and European Defense Tech Hub. The event took place the day after CYSAT Madrid.

Media contact: Tatiana Skydan, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief at THE SIGN, welcome@thesign.media

Photo credit: Ania Lewandowska

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