Posted on 05/26/2005 2:21:12 AM PDT by bd476
WASHINGTON - The CIA is conducting a secretive war game, dubbed "Silent Horizon," this week to practice defending against an electronic assault on the same scale as the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks.
The three-day exercise, ending Thursday, was meant to test the ability of government and industry to respond to escalating Internet disruptions over many months, according to participants. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the CIA asked them not to disclose details of the sensitive exercise taking place in Charlottesville, Va., about two hours southwest of Washington.
The simulated attacks were carried out five years in the future by a fictional alliance of anti-American organizations, including anti-globalization hackers. The most serious damage was expected to be inflicted in the war game's closing hours.
The national security simulation was significant because its premise — a devastating cyberattack that affects government and parts of the economy with the same magnitude as the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings — contravenes assurances by U.S. counterterrorism experts that such far-reaching effects from a cyberattack are highly unlikely. Previous government simulations have modeled damage from cyberattacks more narrowly.
"You hear less and less about the digital Pearl Harbor," said Dennis McGrath, who helped run three similar war games for the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College. "What people call cyberterrorism, it's just not at the top of the list."
The CIA's little-known Information Operations Center, which evaluates threats to U.S. computer systems from foreign governments, criminal organizations and hackers, was running the war game. About 75 people, mostly from the CIA, gathered in conference rooms and reacted to signs of mock computer attacks.
The government remains most concerned about terrorists using explosions, radiation and biological threats. FBI Director Robert Mueller warned earlier this year that terrorists increasingly are recruiting computer scientists but said most hackers "do not have the resources or motivation to attack the U.S. critical information infrastructures."
The government's most recent intelligence assessment of future threats through the year 2020 said cyberattacks are expected, but terrorists "will continue to primarily employ conventional weapons." Authorities have expressed concerns about terrorists combining physical attacks, such as bombings, with hacker attacks to disrupt communications or rescue efforts.
"One of the things the intelligence community was accused of was a lack of imagination," said Dorothy Denning of the Naval Postgraduate School, an expert on Internet threats who was invited by the CIA to participate but declined. "You want to think about not just what you think may affect you but about scenarios that might seem unlikely."
"Livewire," an earlier cyberterrorism exercise for the Homeland Security Department and other federal agencies, concluded there were serious questions about government's role during a cyberattack, depending on who was identified as the culprit — terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers.
It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies.
Hiya expatguy,
I guess everyone better back up their servers and stuff on the net just in case they FUBAR on this one.
Good point, Expatguy. They need to quickly improve in all areas.
I wanna play!
LOL, I'm not sure you are laughing with me or at me.
Now I wonder why Ms. Denning turned down the invitation if she really feels that way.
Her attendance would have given her the opportunity to lend her expertise. She could have helped now with imagining the unlikely scenarios.
I certainly hope that she does not criticize others if something goes wrong in the future.
Not to mention most terrorists don't have the brains.
Its one thing to recruit some guys to go take flight training as long as you are willing to foot the bill and the guys don't have to pass a competitive exam.
Its quite another to recruit some camel jockey to understand all of the detailed workings of a TCP stack well enough to outsmart all of the technicians that put the net together.
Terrorists would not be able to mount such an attack successfully. It has nothing in common with squeezing the trigger on an AK-47 or even mastering rotation of a 767.
The Worm writers or the Chinese are another matter. Since the Chinese do not spend the first 17 years of their lives blindly memorizing useless passages from the Koran they do have the skills to mount an attack, but probably know it would mean war - and the loss of market.
The real risk is from some hacker with either a huge budget or a huge grudge, or both. There are already articles to be found speculating that the relative quite on the worm development scene may be the sign of a new approach of compromising machines, but not making it obvious that they are compromised, until the developers want to pull the trigger. Then all those expensive windows boxes will become bots under the control of some unknown unwashed unshaven and undressed hacker in his pajamas in his parents basement. It will take months to find him.
It will take less than a week to block the damage done, as ISPs and major backbone carriers are already putting packet content filtering schemes to the test. These can quickly be tuned to the signature of new worms, and Norton and Mcaffee will make a fortune selling new anti-virus software.
If this sort of sounds to you like there is vast economic incentive to certain people for there to continue to be worms and viruses, you are probably right.
Because she would be subject to non-disclosure requirements?
She makes money on the side with her publishing and speaking gigs.
Financial incentive sounds plausible but is it okay to hold out hope for ethical programmers?
How would disclosure requirements negatively affect her ability to add to the research conference more than any other attending member?
The CIA would have recruited from other military grad schools, not just the Naval Postgraduate School. The attendees in the war games conference would have had similarly ranked security clearances.
I just thought it curious that she declined while advocating its importance.
"The CIA is conducting a secretive war game"
Not anymore. . .
For some reason, Dr. Denning's bio brings to mind Dr. Laurie Mylroie.
Ping.
Always the dollar then?
God and Country, ethics and conscience before self.
LOL. Yep.
Unfortunately, these types of wargames do not lend themselves to commercialization. These are typically "thinking games" where two teams in separate locations make decisions and issue orders, and everything is filtered through a referees' "cell." These are very free-flowing, open-ended scenarios relying heavily on the whims of the referees.
No no no, you are thinking like a good American - how can she help her country.....
Think about it in a money grubbing way...
If she attends, she will have to sign NDAs, and those might limits her ability to shill her books because she might have to get clearance for some topics.
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