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Applications:

We are open for applying for the 2024-2025 CyberPatriot season. Click here to apply.

Introduction

The main goal of TitanTurtles Club is to study cybersecurity and organize middle school and high school teams to participate in US CyberPatriot competition. Along the way, TitanTurtles Club will also give the opportunity for the students to gain teamwork spirits, sportsmanship, leadership traits and social responsibilities.

CyberPatriot is a nationwide youth cybersecurity competition program managed by the Air & Space Force Association. Every year, over five thousand middle school and high school teams across the country compete in different levels of CyberPatriot competitions. Students will benefit from participating in the CyberPatriot program. The competition and learning journey will help build a well rounded understanding of computer systems and cybersecurity. Students of top teams are capable of earning professional certificates and working professionally in the cybersecurity department of a company.

Every year, the CyberPatriot competition season starts in April when registration is open (Competition starts in October) and ends in March of the next year when the National Final is held in Maryland.

TitanTurtles Club Teams won
2023-2024

2022-2023

CyberPatriot No. 8 OS images, No. 18 National Champion, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place Oregon Champion\

2021-2022

CyberPatriot 1st Place Oregon Champion

To accompany with CyberPatriot schedule, TitanTurtles Club’s plan are designed as follow:

Off season (March - August):

Recruiting season
CTF and other competitions
Offseason preparation
AFA CyberCamps (2 weeks, Standard Camp July 29 - Aug. 2, Advanced Camp Aug. 5 - Aug. 9)
Team registration
Social works

Competition season (September - January (March if advanced to national)):

CyberPatriot competition preparation
CyberPatriot competition rounds (roughly 1 round each month from October to January, to March if advanced to National)

The Club is managed by Coach Pei Zhang, Coach Xinle Yang and professional cybersecurity mentor Sean R. Motivated and capable students will have exposure and engagement in building out next generation student pipeline and delivering community presentations. Students with proven leadership work will earn leadership titles and duties.

We encourage parents to be mentors so that the students can have a better learning result. Parents will be able to learn and grow with students.

The competition website is https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/. The major subjects of the competition are Windows OS, Linux OS and Cisco networking. Students can choose 1 or 2 focus subjects during the competition season. There are also other competition subjects in later stages of the competition. For Windows and Linux, the format is OS virtual machines on VMware. For Cisco networking, the format is Packet Tracer lab.

The Core Values of the Club:

Respect for individual
Learn as a sponge
Strive for excellence
Team First: we win and lose as a team
Fun: we enjoy and celebrate what we do

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Club Application

Like all serious sports or academic competitions, CyberPatriot requires commitment from the students. The application requirements are as follow:

Grades: new students grade 6 - 12 are preferred
Required Donation: $350 per year (To cover 4 rounds of tournaments cost (registration, food, places, internet, servers) and cost of other learning materials. If advance to National Final Competition Tournament, there will be at least $350 additional cost.)
New students are expected to participate in both Standard and Advanced Camps hosted between July 29 to August 9. It will be really hard for students to catch up if students did not participate in the camps. Details of the camp can be found here: https://titanturtles.org/cybercamp.html.
No previous background needed. However, it will be easier for students with programming experiences. We will cover everything you need to know. Students also need to spend time to learn. Winners win because they did the hard work.
Self-driven to learn new things
Self-motivated to take new challenges
Desire to strive for excellence
Go through interview process with coaches
Can commute to Bethany area in Portland, Oregon
Will not release any learning materials to other CyberPatriot teams or to anyone outside the team (It is against CyberPatriot rule to release any competition materials to other CyberPatriot teams).
What we actually do?
- Deep dive into computer systems
- Windows 10, Windows server 2019
- Linux: Ubuntu, Fedora
- Cisco Networking
- Find and Fix Vulnerabilities
When students decide to join the Club and team, we expect the students to be fully committed.
Need to sign extensive, detailed team agreement.
Team meetings: (from March to March of next year. We will skip some major holiday weeks and occasional vacations.)
- Wednesday 8:30pm - 10:00pm, online
- Saturday 6:30pm - 9:30pm, in-person + online
Each class is UNIQUE, every class is very important for first year students!
Students are expected to participate in 80% of the team meetings.
Homework: expect 3 - 10 hours of homework every week
Communication: Students are expected to communicate on discord and gmails. Need to read email every other day.
Students are expected to join the 2 weeks CyberCamps during the summer time or show equal level of training.
Students are expected to speak up and even make presentations of materials they learned.
We will provide regular homework assignment and tests in form of images mock-up practices.
We will form several teams based on performance, subjects alignment, and mutual selection.
Each team will have a captain. Captain needs to have strong team spirit, leadership trait and proven working record.
At the same time, coaches will invite the top students to join the elite team. The goal for elite team is to have a better chance to advance to national final competition. The criteria to select top students:

1) Top performance in 1 of the 3 subjects (Windows, Linux, Cisco Network);
2) Top overall performance;
3) Top team spirit.
Equipment requirement: Initially, students can use any computer to participate in the learning activity. However, students are expected to have a laptop with Intel/AMD CPU and at least 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD Drive with 100GB free space to compete in a team. Costco has good price/warranty on laptops. Expect to spend $800+. Windows machine is preferred. Mac computers with intel chip will work, but are not recommended. Mac computers with M chip will NOT work. Advanced students can use Linux machines, but are not recommended. Chromebook will NOT work. Computer with ARM chip will NOT work.

** If you are serious student who is aiming for National, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD Harddrive gaming laptops are recommended. We had very good experiences with Lenovo Legion gaming laptops. You can purchase them from Costco. **

Coaches and mentors will do their best to provide the most suitable learning materials. Coaches and mentors are committed to motivate students and ensure core values are implemented throughout the learning journey. However, it is students’ responsibility to actually walk the path to success.

Captains

In each team students with a strong overall performance and high participation (showing up, doing presentations, doing homework) will be selected as team captain of the team they are on. They will most likely stay team captain for the rest of the season and they will have an opportunity to prove themselves as great leaders. As Captains you will be expected to put in more work and time than the rest of the team, whether it’s for tasks that you have been delegated to complete or for motivating your team and keeping them up to high standards.

“The day you no longer believe you have something to prove, the day you no longer believe you must give it your all, the day you think you are entitled to special treatment, the day you think all your hard days are behind you, is the day you are no longer the right leader for the job.”

William H. McRaven, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple

These standards are expected of every team captain and everyone on the elite team. Everyone else should also strive toward these standards.