Europe Joins Forces In Massive Simulated Cyber Attack

An anonymous reader writes "Hundreds of cyber security experts from across the EU are testing their readiness to combat cyber-attacks in a day-long simulation across Europe today. In Cyber Europe 2012, 400 experts from major financial institutions, telecoms companies, internet service providers and local and national governments across Europe are facing more than 1200 separate cyber incidents (including more than 30 000 emails) during a simulated DDoS campaign. The exercise is testing how they would respond and co-operate in the event of sustained attacks against the public websites and computer systems of major European banks. If real, such an attack would cause massive disruption for millions of citizens and businesses across Europe, and millions of euros of damage to the EU economy."

How does one 'simulate' this?

[SuricouRaven]

What exactly are they doing? I can think of no way of 'simulating' a massive DDoS short of actually doing it. The only possibility I can see is that they are testing the protocols management put in place regarding who talks to who to make sure that the government advisors are kept informed - lots of phone calls along the lines of 'I'm attacking your mail server, pass it on.'

Re:How does one 'simulate' this?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

For which the correct term would be "tabletop exercise", not "simulation", but it's still valuable and I recommend it to clients as the first step in testing their BC/DR plans.

Re:

[zig007]

They simulate it like the military simulates casualties I suppose. "That guy's dead, now carry him".
You don't actually have to DDoS, the problem is the infrastructure around the systems, that people don't know what to do.
The systems are supposedly down, so there is not much to do about it but trying to get them up again and that is a different exercise I'd think..

Re:

[michalk0]

400 experts are having a good "conferency" time wasting taxpayer money on an event that has absolutely nothing to do with its proclaimed goals. I call this security drill a complete bullshit.

Re:

[piripiri]

s/mod_evasion/mod_evasive

Re:

[djsmiley]

Your brain appears to be overheating due to internal reflection of heat from your foil cap.

Ehhr...

[miffo.swe]

If someone is really out to hurt the infrastructure an DDoS attack is not that efficient. A shovel do much bigger damage if applied on a couple of strategic fibers. DDoS attacks is just nuisance and putting all efforts into stopping those but forgetting just how much damage someone malicious can do easily IRL is rather stupid.

Ten people that cuts a bunch of fiber could black out most of Sweden with ease if they just snip the right ones.

Is was yesterday.

[trancemission]

TFA was posted yesterday, the exercise was yesterday,

Priceless

[frovingslosh]

Chemical sniffing boarding gate: $10,800,000

Government contract for the U.S. air travel system: Billions

$4 bag of potassium nitrate fertilizer sprinkled on sidewalk ice by a terrorist instead of salt: Priceless

Coincidence?

[equex]

It nicely coincides with Anons announced attack on Sweden today. The real thing and a drill at the same time!

ho hum

[Anarchduke]

sounds like just another day trying to use the time warner website.

I'm confused

[Required Snark]

Who are they going after in their simulated attack?

that list needs expansion

[mapkinase]

"400 experts from major financial institutions, telecoms companies, internet service providers and local and national governments across Europe "

What if they randomly perform cyber-attacks against personal home computers as well, find holes, and notify the user via ISP?

HACK THE PLANET!

[allaunjsilverfox2]

But in all seriousness, I can't imagine what they could do other than take down the servers. Unless there was some emergency order that allowed retaliation against the offending source?