Abdullah AlSaleh

After KAUST Academy

Abdullah and teammates won 3rd place representing Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in the National Cybersecurity Authority CTF competition in September 2026. Abdullah is a cybersecurity student at the university, with graduation expected in 2027.

Summer project

Cybersecurity Specialization · Cohort 2026

APT-29 LOTL Adversary Emulation in Active Directory Environment, Threat Hunting, and Incident Response

This project focuses on safely emulating APT29-inspired attack techniques in an isolated Active Directory environment using MITRE CALDERA. The attack activities are monitored through Elastic Security, Sysmon, Windows Event Logs, and PowerShell logging. The project includes detection engineering, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, threat hunting using KQL/EQL, incident analysis, and remediation. The goal is to evaluate detection coverage, identify gaps, improve detection rules, and compare the environment before and after defensive hardening.

Read the final report (PDF)

With KAUST Academy

All alumni

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