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CIA Tests Cyber Warfare Response
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2005-05-26
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The CIA is concluding a three-day Internet war game today that they've kept under wraps until now, according to the Associated Press.
 | | CIA Tests Cyber Warfare Response |  |
With an appropriately video game-esque name, the war game "Silent Horizon" is intended to investigate how a Sept. 11 scale electronic assault might play out and how prepared US defenses will be for it.
The CIA, under the usual cloaks of anonymity, would not disclose all details of the game, but gave some information. Set five years in the future, a fictional alliance of anti-American organizations and anti-globalization hackers waged an assault on simulated electronic targets, and then measured the reactions.
What is still unknown is whether the government would be able to detect the early signs of a cyber attack without help from private companies.
Though independent cyber attacks in general don't seem to be on the radar of concern for FBI Director Robert Mueller, he has expressed the concern of a terrorist-hacker alliance.
Earlier in the year, Mueller stated that terrorists were recruiting computer scientists to aid in their aspirations-combining threats of explosives, radiation, and biological warfare with cyber attacks on various infrastructure targets. Attractive infrastructure may include air traffic controllers, communication systems, and rescue operations.
"One of the things the intelligence community was accused of was a lack of imagination," said Dorothy Denning of the Naval Postgraduate School.
"You want to think about not just what you think may affect you but about scenarios that might seem unlikely."
Quite possibly the most discouraging aspect of cyber warfare is the difficulty in deciding who launched the attack, as attacks could be perpetrated governments, terrorists or individual hacker enemies.
The government believes, though, that until 2020, enemies will most likely continue to use methods that involve more traditional attacks, utilizing explosives on strategic targets.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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