[Infowarrior] - US Matrix-style cyberwar firing range goes to Phase II

[Richard Forno]

US Matrix-style cyberwar firing range goes to Phase II
Duplicate internet for gov war-malware trials
By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Posted in Government, 12th January 2010 12:54 GMT

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/12/cyber_range_phase_ii/

US plans to develop a virtual network world - to be populated by  
mirror computers and inhabited by myriad software sim-people  
"replicants", and used as a firing range in which to develop the art  
of cyber warfare - have moved ahead.

The so-called "National Cyber Range" project will now move forward to  
Phase II, and a brace of hefty contracts for this were inked  
yesterday. US killware goliath Lockheed scoops $30.8m and another  
$24.8m goes to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

According to Pentagon officials in charge of the Cyber Range  
programme, Lockheed and Johns Hopkins boffins will "build on the  
preliminary design created in Phase I, culminating in the completion  
of a working prototype that demonstrates the capabilities of the  
National Cyber Range (NCR)... it is anticipated that the NCR will  
enable a revolution in the Nation's ability to conduct cyber  
operations".

Previously it has been specified that the Range is to be able to  
simulate a cyber world on the same scale as the entire internet or the  
US military Global Information Grid. The Range's unprecedented tech is  
to be able to create simulated computers, nodes and other network  
entities of any type - if necessary duplicating a never-before-seen  
piece of kit "rapidly".

Even more resemblance to a Matrix-esque artificial world is to be  
achieved with the provision in the Range of "replicants" representing  
human users, sysadmins and so forth, who will show fear and stress  
just as real humans do - reacting and changing their behaviour as the  
frightful code pestilences, mutating malware plagues and other  
cybergeddon phenomena to be tested in the Range sweep through their  
universe.

Among the hapless replicant bystanders will move the very cream of  
America's combat geeks, armed with "technology thrusts [and]  
classified cyber programs". Against them will manoeuvre the shadowy  
OpFor (or Opposing Forces) similarly packing weapons-grade, "nation  
state quality" warez of the most potent sort.

The Range project is at present under the aegis of DARPA, as one might  
expect: the maverick Pentagon tech bureau is really the only one you'd  
expect to be in charge of a project to create an entire accurately  
duplicated internet and simulated IT-using human race purely for the  
purposes of unleashing cybergeddon upon it.

However if the kit moves forward in the way it is expected to, one  
might expect the new wave of US military cyber forces to spend much  
time testing their weapons and polishing their skills within the  
Range. Security operatives of the 688th Information Operations Wing,  
for instance, might earn their wings sparring there with the crack  
hackers of the offensively-oriented 67th Network Warfare Wing in  
exercises before going out into the real internet to do battle against  
America's unseen online adversaries.

Blighty, for its part, is to get a cyber range of its own near  
Portsmouth courtesy of BT and US defence firm Northrop Grumman. ®