[LINK] Simulation of Cybergedon
Jan Whitaker
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Thu Feb 18 08:24:10 AEDT 2010
Interesting story about a simulation:
Former US officials fend off mock cyber attack (18 February 2010)
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/security/former-us-officials-fend-off-mock-cyber-attack-20100217-obto.html
http://snipurl.com/uef5g
Former top US officials staged a digital doomsday simulation on
Tuesday in which a huge cyber attack crashes mobile networks, slows
Web traffic to a crawl and plunges major cities into darkness.
Dubbed "Cyber ShockWave," the elaborate exercise was held in a
Washington hotel room transformed for the day into the White House
Situation Room, where the president and his advisers typically meet
to address national emergencies.
Former president George W. Bush's Homeland Security chief Michael
Chertoff played the role of National Security Advisor as the
"cabinet" sought to respond to a nightmare scenario drawn up by
former CIA director Michael Hayden.
As the "crisis" escalated, the officials discussed various actions
including calling out the National Guard, nationalising the utility
companies and staging a retaliatory strike if the authors of the
cyberattack become known.
"If this is an attack on the United States the president, as
commander in chief, has the authority to use the full powers at his
disposal," said former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, in her
role as attorney general.
"We're in good shape from a command-and-control standpoint," Charles
Wald, a retired general acting as Secretary of Defense, reassured the team.
"We can take action offensively if we know where to go," said Wald,
former deputy commander of US European Command. "Problematically, we
don't know where that is."
"I do think we need to be careful about talking about acts of war,"
cautioned John Negroponte, the former Director of National
Intelligence who switched hats for the simulation to portray the
Secretary of State.
The exercise, which was filmed by CNN and will be broadcast at a
later date, was organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center to "educate
the public about our vulnerabilities," said Eileen McMenamin, BPC
vice president of communications.
Three large video screens behind the participants displayed
multi-color maps of the United States with a series of mock updates
and a fictional television network, "GNN," broadcast news reports on
the cascading crisis.
[more]
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
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Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer
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