Cyber-Terrorism Simulation

Today I intend to share with you a real case in cyber terrorism which I found it so useful after explaining the types of attackers and hackers and different formats of attack which may happen in cyber terrorism.

On February 16 the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) hosted Cyber ShockWave, a simulated cyber attack on the United States, in Washington D.C. The simulation envisioned an attack that unfolds over a single day in July 2011. When the Cabinet convenes to face this crisis, 20 million of the nation’s smart phones have already stopped working. The attack, the result of a malware program that had been planted in phones months earlier through a popular “March Madness” basketball bracket application, disrupts mobile service for millions. The attack escalates, shutting down an electronic energy trading platform and crippling the power grid on the Eastern seaboard. Of a potential cyber attack on the U.S., Stephen Friedman, who played the role of Secretary of the Treasury, said, “There is no question in my mind that this is a predictable surprise and we need to get our act together.”

Joe Hagin, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff stated, “In today’s highly charged environment and with the incredible reliance upon mobile communications, it is of vital importance that anyone with exposure to cellular technologies, either personally or in their business, take proactive steps to protect themselves, their networks, their users, and their data from attack.”

SMobile Systems offered five best practices to avoid the vulnerabilities exposed by the BPC simulation, these include:

• Protect mobile devices with the same baseline security as PCs;
• Recognize and take action to centrally control a heterogeneous mobile device environment;
• Implement technology to protect against all lost and stolen devices;
• Embrace productivity by supplementing mobile devices with security;
• Look to the cloud for solutions.

While it is hard to know how realistic the exercise was or exactly what the stated outcome of: “unprepared for cyber threats” exactly means, exercises such as these can be valuable, if nothing else to get people to think about disaster preparedness.