DARPA Unveils Cyber Warfare Range
Dec 30, 2008
By David A. Fulghum/AviationWeek.com
Cyber weapon researchers worry that pieces of the digital warfare puzzle are still missing, in particular projection of new threats that foes may throw at the U.S. But U.S. Defense Department researchers may have an answer in the form of a new proving grounds of sorts.
“Who’s looking at what’s coming next?” asks Rance Walleston, director of BAE Systems’ Information Operations Initiative. “That’s still weak.”
Already, “we are seeing the threats shifting,” says Aaron Penkacik, director of BAE Systems’ Collaborative Technology Alliance that works with small companies and universities around the world to create and developed specialized materials and technologies. “As you go into a new theater of operations, you see [advanced communications and new uses for networks] pop-up everywhere. The threat is there, ad-hoc, undefined and asymmetric. So you have to stand up your capability quickly to defend and fight your networks.”
The BAE executive says the ramifications are already playing out in real ways. “It’s changing the way we think about deploying software-defined radios,” he says by way of example. “We’re using common modules that have software functions that are adaptable in real time as the threat changes.”
And today, as there are specialized test ranges for all types of radars and weapons, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded a new program called the National Cyber Range. So far they’ve awarded a six-month, paid proposal phase contract to a number of contractors.
“They’re going to build an environment where we can play around and begin looking at ‘anticipated’ problems,” Walleston says. “What’s they’re saying is that we need the equivalent of a White Sands [Missile Range] for cyber war. We have bits and pieces of range all over the place, but nothing definitive. This will be [the premier] cyber range where you can bring all your tools and techniques and try them out in an environment that closely resembles the real world.”
So what are the basic requirements for a cyber warfare range?
“We want to change cyber attack from an art to a science,” Walleston says. “You need [lots of] real estate, isolation and an infrastructure that can be attacked and that will record precisely the results. Isolation is a big deal because that’s the only way you can determine if some software agent you built works.
“It’s hard to know what you are actually going to get from a test in a laboratory against five computers when the capability you need has to function against five million computers,” he continues. “There’s nowhere to test that, so DARPA’s trying to put together a range with fidelity in many dimensions — such as the number and types of nodes and how they’re connected — so that you can accurately determine the effectiveness of some tool. The real trick will be how quickly you can upgrade the range to deal with changing threats.”
Photo: Wikipedia
