"This is only a test"

The Pentagon, Justice Department, National Security Agency were just some of the organizations that joined the Homeland Security Department in an invitation only "Cyber Storm" war game test of the U.S.'s ability to defend against security threats. The test incidents came from three categories: computer attacks, physical attacks and physical attacks and they included a slew of made up catastrophes, including airport control towers disruptions, satellite navigation disruptions, hazardous materials on trains, and attacks on transportation lines and energy utilities and overwhelming computers at the NY and NJ Port Authorities.

No real systems were hurt in the making of this test. The attacks were generated from headquarters of the Secret Service using isolated computers and did not connect the Internet. It's no surprise that Cyber Storm revealed that there was a certain amount of confusion in the wake of the pseudo disasters. For example, critical Cyber Storm game players weren't sure what National Cyber Response Coordination Group's respsonsibilities were (they're the U.S.'s numero uno organization that is supposed to thwart major cyber attacks).

I thought the media reactions to the staged catastrophes were telling. After some simultated reporters were tricked into spreading bogus data, it ended up making things worse for citizens and the financial markets. I was kind of dismayed to learn that in this exercise, a major news network (name not given) reported on the attacks but didn't share their sources with the government. I'm all for protecting sources, but if national security is at risk, I think that should go out the window; putting thousands of citizens at risk should never take a back seat to protecting one (or even a few) sources.