U.S. Weathers ‘Cyber Storm’ in Exercise

“Dozens of detailed, mock disasters [confronted] officials rapid-fire in the U.S. government’s biggest-ever ‘Cyber Storm’ war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. The Homeland Security Department ran the exercise [last year] to test the nation’s hacker defenses, with help from the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, National Security Agency and others.… The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers.… Companies and governments worked successfully in some cases. But key players didn’t understand the role of the premier U.S. organization responsible for fending off major cyber attacks, called the National Cyber Response Coordination Group, and it didn’t have enough technical experts.” Cyber Storm 2 is scheduled for March.

 http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gd_SXvPiXXwcW63vRuZtrAn2IX5AD8UGOAB00