U.S. Fails to Withstand Mock Cyberattack
Saturday, December 20, 2008
AP
March 4, 2007: Smoke pours from a diesel generator during a simulation of a hacker attack on the U.S. electrical grid.
We're not ready.
That's the disheartening conclusion reached by the organizers of a mock cyberattack on the United States, reports Reuters.
Details were sketchy, but participants told the news agency that the exercise exposed serious security gaps in leadership, preparedness and communications.
"We're way behind where we need to be now," said Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I. "This is equivalent in my mind to before September 11 ... we were awakened to the threat on the morning after September 11."
The two-day "cyberwar" simulation involved 230 government agencies, private companies and other groups.
It ran through what would happen if overseas hackers launched massive attacks during a national crisis — as happened in Estonia last year during a wave of ethnic violence, and again in Georgia during the brief Russian invasion this August.
"There isn't really anybody in charge," Booz Allen Hamilton consultant Mark Gerencser told Reuters.
