Associated Press May 25, 2005.
The CIA is testing reactions to an extended simulated cyber-attack on the US by terrorists.
"The three-day exercise, known as "Silent Horizon," is meant to test the ability of government and industry to respond to escalating Internet disruptions over many months"
"The simulated attacks were carried out five years in the future by a fictional new alliance of anti-American organizations that included anti-globalization hackers. The most serious damage was expected to be inflicted in the closing hours of the war game Thursday.
"The national security simulation was significant because its premise - a devastating cyberattack that affects government and parts of the economy on the scale of the 2001 suicide hijackings - contradicts assurances by U.S. counterterrorism experts that such effects from a cyberattack are highly unlikely.
"The government's most recent intelligence assessment of future threats through the year 2020 said cyberattacks are expected but terrorists "will continue to primarily employ conventional weapons." Authorities have expressed concerns about terrorists combining physical attacks such as bombings with hacker attacks to disrupt rescue efforts, known as hybrid or "swarming" attacks."
The likelihood of this kind of terrorism is not what is being tested here. Cyber terrorism could be very likely and it could be extremly unlikely. This kind of wargame will not resolve that issue. What a war game of this type does is test what roles different organizations and different people perform, how those various roles and people work with each other, and what roles may be needed that have not yet been identified.
This is, interestingly, a CIA operation. Not Homeland Security, not the White House, Not the Pentagon, all of which are tightly under the control of Bush et. al. and not likely to show any imagination and forward planning. Fortunately there are a few elements of our government not yet taken over by faith instead of reason and rationality.
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