Interesting Washington Post package this week explores an initiative that lets government hackers invade a virtual town of 15,000 people “who have e-mail accounts, work passwords and bank deposits. The power plant has employees. The hospital has patients. The coffeeshop customers will come and go, using the insecure WiFi system, just as in real life.”
CyberCity even has its own social network — FaceSpace. And its computers “simulate communications and operations, including e-mail, heating systems, a railroad.”
The Post compares the Pentagon’s cybersecurity exploration system to “the mock desert towns that were constructed at military facilities to help American soldiers train for the war in Iraq. But here, the soldier-hackers from the Air Force and other branches of the military will practice attacking and defending the computers and networks that run the theoretical town. In one scenario, they will attempt to take control of a speeding train containing weapons of mass destruction.”
The CyberCity story is part of the Posts’s Zero Day series on cyberspace security.
