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DARPA's Been Building a Big Fake Internet, But Not Fast Enough

by Matthew Zuras on June 22, 2010 at 12:26 PM

Darpa builds a fake InternetMaybe you heard about DARPA's (the creepy research arm of the government) secret, fake version of the Internet? It's been reported here and there, but, you know, those covert programs have a tendency to get swept under the rug. It was two years ago that DARPA received a directive from the White House and the Pentagon, as part of a $17 billion effort to strengthen national security, to build a replica Internet that could be used as a testing ground for government hackers. Facing the prospect of digital attacks on our financial markets, power grids and telecommunication systems, DARPA has been building the battleground sim, called the National Cyber Range, to emulate the behavior of both the real Internet and the billions of people who use it daily.

Last year, the New York Times called the Cyber Range a "Bikini Atoll for an online age" -- which may be a bit of hyperbole, albeit a comparison that DARPA was expected to fulfill. (Tell that to the indigenous people that the U.S. military relocated from the infamous nuclear testing ground to surrounding islands, where some of them still suffered radiation exposure.) The problem with the Cyber Range, though, is that they're just not building the thing fast enough.

Wired reports that some military personnel are unhappy with DARPA's schedule and other sectors may be looking into building their own ranges in which to test cyberwarfare attacks. An anonymous senior official told the magazine, "Everybody wanted a range, but DARPA's program was a 6- to 7-year effort to put a national cyber range in place. That's why support eroded. Everybody wanted it quicker."

With a $130 million budget (which seems scant to us, although we're not G-Men), the National Cyber Range is intended to be more thorough and complex than the Internet programs the Navy, the National Security Agency and the Air Force are currently exploring. Noah Schachtman at Wired claims that existing ranges take months to set up for a single test, while DARPA's program aims for multiple tests -- complete with complex bots that emulate the behavior of real people trying to get work done on the Web. And, more importantly, can you use the Cyber Range to get on 'Farmville?' Because an attack on our webcorn is tantamount to testing A-Bombs on poor island nations. [From: Wired]

Tags: BikiniAtoll, CyberWarfare, darpa, defense, internet, interntet, military, NationalCyberRange, NationalSecurity, top, web

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