For the past week, the US has been under a simulated cyber attack. The exercise, known as Cyber Storm, was intended to test America's defences in response to a full-scale cyber attack by hackers.
The main aim was to discover how well the US is prepared to respond not only to attacks on military and other security services but also against energy, information technology, telecommunications, and transport infrastructures. Among the simulated assaults, one of the scenarios simulated a cyber incident where an electricity company's computer system is compromised and causing disruption to the national grid.
The Federal government examined the speed and effectiveness of its response, the co-ordination between different agencies and recovery. The exercise involved Federal, State and local governments, national and international agencies and private companies.
The Department for Homeland Security, which coordinated the exercise, says the operation was purely hypothetical and was not intended as a forecast of a future terrorist threat and that it had no effect on the Internet as a whole.
National governments are becoming increasingly aware of their reliance on interconnected computer systems and the vulnerability to coordinated attack by criminal or terrorist organisations.
Last week hundreds of Danish web sites were defaced by hackers protesting at the depictions of the prophet Mohammed in a cartoon.
Comments