U.S. Mock Disaster Drill: Trains, Planes and Bloggers
And that was just for starters.
The fictitious international calamities were among dozens of detailed, mock disasters confronting officials in rapid succession in the U.S. government's biggest-ever "Cyber Storm" war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. The Homeland Security Department ran the exercise to test the America's hacker defenses, with help from the State, Defense and Justice departments, the CIA, the National Security Agency and others.
The laundry list of fictional catastrophes, which include hundreds of people on "No Fly" lists arriving suddenly at U.S. airport ticket counters, is significant because it suggests what kind of real-world trouble keeps people in the White House awake at night.
Imagined villains include hackers, bloggers, even reporters. After mock electronic attacks overwhelmed computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unspecified "major news network" airing reports about the attackers refused to reveal its sources to the government. Other simulated reporters were duped into spreading "believable but misleading" information that worsened fallout by confusing the public and financial markets, according to the government's files.
The $3 million, the invitation-only war game simulated what the United States described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers. The government is organizing another multimillion-dollar wargame, Cyber Storm 2, to take place in early March.
"They point out where your expectations of your capabilities may be overstated," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the AP. "They may...