Cyber Attack Range

Cyber attack and defense gaming environments are becoming more commonplace as the realization grows that there is a serious need for training and skills development in this area and skills that go beyond abstract “book learning” and need hands-on lab time. Virtual environments makes this easier to accomplish.

What is a Cyber Exercise? – [sans.org]

A cyber exercise is a live computer network attack and defense event. A typical exercise runs at least one day for a small team and up to five days for large organizations or multiple teams.
Teams generally fall into two categories; attackers and defenders. Defenders are scored on their ability to keep their IT systems up and functional in support of their business processes. Attackers are scored on their ability to disrupt business operations.

Pentagon readies its cyberwar defences – [newscientist.com]

But despite the threat, current NATO war games tend to treat cyber-attack simulations as an afterthought, according to military sources. Now the Pentagon is hoping to change that by developing a centre at which the military can play realistic electronic war games.

Called the National Cyber Range, the centre will mimic not only the hardware that might be used to inflict cyber-attacks, but also the likely behaviours of the people behind the attacks. The centre, being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is part of the US government’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, launched last year.

With this in mind DARPA is ploughing $30 million into developing its testing range for cyber-warfare countermeasures, or “cyber sidearms” as it refers to them. The facility will allow teams to engage in lengthy fights in cyberspace using faithful replications of the US military’s global satellite, wireless and landline networks. Many of the range’s functions are classified, but DARPA says it wants it to have a sophisticated “nation-state quality” enemy team against which to test its countermeasures.

Ultimately, the best hope lies in organisations like DARPA developing early warning systems for cyber-attacks, says Charles Williamson, a US air force cyberspace analyst at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Convincing military leaders of the urgent need for such a system may not be easy, he admits. “Our biggest threat is senior leaders who think the computer is technologically equivalent to a toaster.”

Cyberwarfare: Darpa’s New ‘Space Race’ – [wired.com]

Darpa today issued an announcement, describing how the range would be a test where the government could:

• Conduct unbiased, quantitative and qualitative assessment of information assurance and survivability tools in a representative network environment.
• Replicate complex, large-scale, heterogeneous networks and users in current and future Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems and operations.
• Enable multiple, independent, simultaneous experiments on the same infrastructure.
• Enable realistic testing of Internet/Global-Information-Grid (GIG) scale research.
• Develop and deploy revolutionary cyber testing capabilities.
• Enable the use of the scientific method for rigorous cyber testing.

NCR Proposers Day Presentation – [darpa.mil - Dr. Tony Tether]

NCR Proposers Day Presentation – [darpa.mil - Dr. Michael VanPutte]

National Cyber Range Proposers’ Day – [darpa.mil - Ms. Barbara McQuiston]

NATIONAL CYBER RANGE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS – [darpa.mil]