Real-World Cyber City Used To Train Cyber Warriors 59
Orome1 writes "NetWars CyberCity is a small-scale city located close by the New Jersey Turnpike complete with a bank, hospital, water tower, train system, electric power grid, and a coffee shop. It was developed to teach cyber warriors from the U.S. military how online actions can have kinetic effects. Developed in response to a challenge by U.S. military cyber warriors, NetWars CyberCity is an intense defensive training program organized around missions. 'We've built over eighteen missions, and each of them challenges participants to devise strategies and employ tactics to thwart computer attacks that would cause significant real-world damage,' commented Ed Skoudis, SANS Instructor and NetWars CyberCity Director."
Re:Doing it wrong (Score:5, Informative)
They have it wrong. It's on a tabletop. The goal of NetWars is to have a predefined and cheap proving ground for doing cyber war games, essentially. It doesn't require a literal city. And the tabletop thing is for the "ooh and ahhh" factor with brass.
From the recent SANS NewsBite entry about it:
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...when all the work is done by machines, and we are all out of jobs, what other things will we do apart from go mad, and be clubbed down by various forces in various interesting ways?
When no one has to work, hopefully we can spend our time enjoying ourselves rather than utterly wasting a third to a half of our waking lives.
Anyone who would go mad without work is mad.
Don't F*** with our Coffee! (Score:4, Insightful)
NetWars CyberCity is a small-scale city located close by the New Jersey Turnpike complete with a bank, hospital, water tower, train system, electric power grid, and a coffee shop.
You take out the electricity, and we will all stumble around wondering how to connect to the net...
You take out the coffee shop, and you will find us all focused on your destruction (or on finding another source of coffee, whichever happens first.)
and... just to keep this one going: http://xkcd.com/705/ [xkcd.com]
You left off the best quote. (Score:2)
Just think about that the next time your Internet connection goes out.
Disconnect from the Internet or firewall.
Firewall.
Disconnect from the Internet or firew
Why is this shit connected to the internet? (Score:2)
Should these things not be on their own separate networks? Do we really need the water tower connected to the internet.
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VPN? The network itself is not on the internet, but you have a protected access path through it.
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Consider how many government organizations have been compromised by an email with an attachment or a link lately. With just that single port open to the water's network, multiple attack vectors immediately present themselves that don't necessarily involve brute forcing the vpn.
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How are air-gap network isolation practices "security through obscurity?"
Slashdot just keeps getting dumber.
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P.S. air gapping a network involves A LOT more than unplugging the ethernet cord, but what would you know about it?
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Security through obscurity is a pejorative referring to a principle in security engineering, which attempts to use secrecy of design or implementation to provide security
Now let's think a bit, secrecy of design... offline, that's pretty secret. Moving along, let's read a bit more from wikipedia Air gap networking [wikipedia.org]
The concept represents nearly the maximum protection one network can have from another (save turning the device off). It is not possible for packets or datagrams to "leap" across the air gap from one network to another, but software such as Stuxnet has been known to bridge the gap by exploiting security holes related to the handling of removable media.
Could there be more to air gap security than just unplugging the wires? Read the quote again son. Got your nose stuck too deep in a book to apply it to the real world? I'm sure there's a wiki article somewhere for that.
And I've got #s behind my buzzwords, what have you accomplished AC?
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As long as the director of the water treatment plant doesn't want to drive in to work at 3 am in the morning to press a button to fix a problem... yes. Good luck making the security through obscurity argument to that person.
I think you mean the engineer, not director. In any case, it's an easy argument to make: "This is one of the job requirements. Comply with it or be replaced."
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So... (Score:2)
Fits in a six by eight foot area (Score:2)
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Why the New Jersey Turnpike?
It doesn't say where it actually is, but if it is a military thing, it would be at a military base. And Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst is a short drive from the New Jersey Turnpike...
Defense =offense? (Score:1)
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Warriors? Really? (Score:3)
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Wait. You're mad at the spin of military focused training names sounding military, but other labels you don't feel are as cool applying to non-military?
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Or you can go solo in your parents basement and do the same thing, learn much more, and get usually 100x better, and be so enlightened, so much more smarter than then government that you become a 'terrorist' to their plans.
You become a terrorist when you act criminally against the democratically elected legitimate government in order to further your own vision of society. Whether you do this by blowing up a dam with your advanced explosives knowledge or vandalising the IRS website with your 1337 haxorz skillz is irrelevant.
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Pff... everyone knows All your base are belong to us [allyourbas...ngtous.com].
Now all we need a Cyber CyberCyber, and we're set. (Score:2, Insightful)
The word "cyber" is like "cloud" or "pirate". Every time you hear it, you know for a fact, that the writer doesn't know shit about computers or the Internet. Same goes for iDevice (/ Win 8/Phone) and Twitter users, but they additionally like to pretend they are "hip" in a ridiculously cringe-worthy fashion. At least they got that cringe-worthiness part in common with the former group.
"small scale" is an understatement (Score:1)
worst post of the day.
"The town is a virtual place that exists only on computer networks run by a New Jersey-based security firm working under contract with the U.S. Air Force. Computers simulate communications and operations, including e-mail, heating systems, a railroad and an online social networking site, dubbed FaceSpace"
"CyberCity itself fits in a six by eight foot area and was created using miniature buildings and houses, the underlying power control systems, hospital software, and other infrastructu
Tactics to thwart computer attacks? (Score:3)
Then don't connect your vital infrastructure to the INTERNET !!!
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seems like over kill for cyber wars (Score:2)
seems like over kill for cyber wars.
Can do the same in small scare and you can even crash some model trains as part of some missions.
The military guys still don't get it (Score:2)
Looks like the generals want to solve the hacker threat in the traditional ways, trying to get some soldiers learn to hack. God forbid they trust civilian whitehats.
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Looks like the generals want to solve the hacker threat in the traditional ways, trying to get some soldiers learn to hack. God forbid they trust civilian whitehats.
(God forbid they trust civilian whitehats.)
Who do you think they are recruiting right now?
Need a job?
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Looks like the generals want to solve the hacker threat in the traditional ways, trying to get some soldiers learn to hack. God forbid they trust civilian whitehats.
Trust shouldn't be in the equation when you're talking about cyberwar and hacking. It's more who has the skills and who is competent? The human being cannot be trusted in any information security equation or scenario as the human being is always the weak link. That is one of the first things you should learn.
"Kinetic effects" (Score:2)
That's "killing people and breaking stuff" to you and me.
Close to the New Jersey turnpike? (Score:1)
Sounds like a secure place. I mean, if that won't slow them, they're screwed anyway.
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Usa training its own terrorists (Score:1)
oh joy
time to teach stupid a lesson
Adorable Little Piglet Attacks (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=HlZRcxvGIWE&NR=1 [youtube.com]
Thank God someone will be out there to defend us against stuff like this.