U.S. cyberwar games turn into hacker melee

The recent "Cyber Storm" war games held by the U.S. government's Homeland Security Department took a turn when participants tried to hack into the computers that were running the exercise. The war game simulated cyberattacks against the U.S. infrastructure over a five day period. But instead of attacking the scenario, some players opted to cheat. "Cyber Storm 2" is scheduled for March.

Read the full AP story on Wired News: "Threats from everywhere in 'Cyber Storm'".

[Dr_Zinj]

I read the Wired article and only have 2 takeaways from it.

1. The DHS isn't competent to do the job they are publicly tasked with. By having to admonish players that they aren't supposed to cheat the scenario by hacking the game computers, they automatically invalidate the usefulness of the game as a real life simulation. In a real war game, the players use ALL advantages. If one side defeats the other far quicker than anticipated, all parties debreif the exercise, and then implement measures to counter the advantage, and not by saying, "Oh, you weren't supposed to do that." Sorry, but Al Qaeda doesn't play by your petty rules.

2. The movie scenario in "Live Free or Die Hard", is a heck of a lot more likely to occur than people realize. And the only reason why Bruce Willis won that one was pure dumb luck (plus it was written that way).

One word of warning. After reading Tom Clancy's novel, Debt of Honor, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before someone utilized a large body aircraft in a similar manner. in less than 10 years, 9/11 was the fulfillment of that vision. Live Free or Die Hard is another vision that will come true, sooner or later. Better watch for it to happen in the next decade.