Look How Cute this Military Cyber Warfare Training Ground Is

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wnyc.org/story/cyber-city-military-grade-miniature-town/

By Eric Molinsky
WNYC.org
December 17, 2014

Somewhere hidden in the sleepy suburbs of New Jersey, there is a very 
small town. This all-American village boasts good public transit, its own 
reservoir, a coffee shop, a church, a bank... you name it. Their 
international airport rarely has delays.

Where is this idyllic hideaway? That's a military secret.

CyberCity, as it's called, serves as a training ground for a new class of 
specialized "cyber warriors," capable of defending against cyber attack. 
Every day, soldiers plot to take over the town, by hacking into its 
schools, its water systems, its power grid, and its Internet, as 
colleagues and instructors watch on screens in the other room. It's run by 
the SANS Institute's Ed Skoudis, whom the military hired to design a new 
generation of training equipment – and, as Skoudis said, your average 
digital simulator wasn't going to cut it:

  "If you tell them, 'Hey, one of your folks was able to hack into a power
  grid and turn the lights back on,' certain people in the military
  leadership would look at that and say, 'You just showed me that my
  people can play a video game.' Whereas we can say it was a real power
  grid. Admittedly controlling a city whose surface area was 48 square
  feet – but still."

While we can't disclose CyberCity's precise location, we can say this: 
Skoudis' souped-up model train set sits very near the center of innovation 
in military training, national security and technology-fueled warfare.

[...]

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