The Cyber Storm exercise was a simulated exercise overseen by the Department of Homeland Security that took place February 6 through February 10, 2006 with the purpose of testing the nations defenses against digital espionage

Hacker (computer security)

In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

. The simulation was targeted primarily at American security organizations but officials from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand participated as well.

Simulation

The exercise simulated a large scale attack on critical digital infrastructure such as communications, transportation, and energy production. The simulation took place a series of incidents which included.

• Washington, D.C. metro trains mysteriously shutting down.
• Bloggers revealing locations of railcars containing hazardous materials.
• The airport control towers
  Control tower
  A control tower, or more specifically an Air Traffic Control Tower , is the name of the airport building from which the air traffic control unit controls the movement of aircraft on and around the airport. Control towers are also used to control the traffic for other forms of transportation such...
  
   of Philadelphia and Chicago mysteriously shutting down.
• A mysterious liquid appearing on a London subway.
• Significant numbers of people on "no fly" lists
  No Fly List
  The No Fly List is a list, created and maintained by the United States government's Terrorist Screening Center , of people who are not permitted to board a commercial aircraft for travel in or out of the United States. The list has also been used to divert away from U.S. airspace aircraft not...
  
   suddenly appearing at airports all over the nation.
• Planes flying too close to the White House
  White House
  The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
  
  .
• Water utilities in Los Angeles getting compromised.

Internal difficulties

During the exercise the computers running the simulation came under attack by the players themselves. Heavily censored files released to the Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 reveal that at some time during the exercise the organizers sent every one involved an e-mail

E-mail

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

marked "IMPORTANT!" telling the participants in the simulation not to attack the game's control computers.

Performance of participants

The Cyber Storm exercise highlighted the gaps and shortcomings of the nation's cyber defenses. The cyber storm exercise report found that institutions under attack had a hard time getting the bigger picture and instead focused on single incidents treating them as "individual and discrete." In light of the test the Department of Homeland Security raised concern that the relatively modest resources assigned to cyber-defense would be "overwhelmed in a real attack".