Lowering the Infrastructure Barrier to Hands-On Cybersecurity Education: Design and Feasibility of Kinetic Breach, a Browser-Based Gamified Investigation Simulator

Hands-on investigation practice is central to developing cybersecurity competencies such as log analysis and system examination, yet the realistic environments that provide it, such as cyber ranges, virtual-machine laboratories, and container testbeds, impose infrastructure, configuration, and maintenance costs that place practical experience beyond the easy reach of many beginners and resource-constrained institutions. This paper addresses that access problem through the design and technical feasibility evaluation of Kinetic Breach, a browser-delivered platform for practising cybersecurity investigation skills that requires no virtual machine, container, or laboratory software on the learner's part and only a single conventional web application on the institution's self-hosted server. Following a design-science approach, the platform integrates a simulated Linux-like investigation environment, a discovery-based assessment model that admits multiple valid evidentiary paths rather than a single scripted solution, a gamification layer to sustain engagement, and an adaptive AI guidance component that offers progressive hints without disclosing solutions and whose output is kept deliberately separate from the platform's deterministic scoring. Feasibility was assessed through systematic software verification comprising fifty-five automated tests across unit, integration, end-to-end, security, and load classes. All fifty-five tests passed; a complete investigation lifecycle executed correctly through the discovery, scoring, and progression pipeline; the tested application-level security controls behaved as intended; and the system remained stable under modest concurrency within a local environment. These results establish that an accessible, infrastructure-light, gamified, AI-guided investigation trainer is buildable and behaves as designed. The study makes no claim regarding usability, engagement, or learning gains, which require evaluation with human participants and are identified as the primary direction for future work. Kinetic Breach is thus offered as an accessible on-ramp to hands-on cybersecurity investigation and as a design foundation for subsequent educational evaluation.

cybersecurity education, hands-on learning, gamification, AI-assisted tutoring, educational accessibility

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