Cyber Table Top Exercises

an imageOn Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 0830 in La Crosse, Wisconsin three cyber table top exercises will be staged as a pre-conference exercise of the Association of Public safety Communications Officials' (APCO) North Central Conference. Like many table top exercises these exercises will deal with an active shooter incident on campus with hostages, emergency response to an unprecedented natural disaster and terrorist disruption of a public gathering. Unlike most table top exercises, however, these exercises will focus on the cyber aspects of the three scenarios.

The objective of these exercises is to transfer knowledge about key aspects of the underlying technologies, how they are exploited and disrupted and how risks can be mitigated. The overall program will be moderated and facilitated by Wisconsin Emergency Management's Terrorism Exercise Training Coordinator and La Crosse County's Emergency Management Coordinator with each of the three individual exercises being conducted by Knowledge Transfer Agents (KTAs) who are practitioners with technology and cybersecurity credentials in their respective scenarios. Additional knowledge transfer will be performed through cross-disciplinary participation from schools, cities, counties, hospitals and other interested and impacted parties whose participation is being actively solicited. In order to get the most impact from the program each registered participant will have an opportunity to review and edit the Exercise Planning Guide (EPG) prior to the exercise and their inputs will be noted through end notes in the guide with their name, agency or company affiliation and email address.

Participation in the preconference table top exercises requires a small fee in addition to the conference fee. Table top exercise participation can be selected when registering for the conference. Public Safety agencies that incur overtime or backfill in order to attend may be eligible for reimbursement. Participation fees may be reimbursable as well. For additional information please contact La Crosse County Emergency Management Coordinator Keith Butler by phone (608-789-4811) or email (butler.keith@co.la-crosse.wi.us).


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SCHOOL SHOOTING WITH HOSTAGES CYBER TABLE TOP

Two students attack their senior class, holding the Student Council officers as hostages and using campus video systems to track the actions of law enforcement and to broadcast their demands over the Internet. This scenario, or some variation on the theme, is all too common: the perpetrators of this horrible crime feel as though they are being discriminated against and feel compelled to use force to make their grievances known.

In this scenario the two students ran for Student Council office and lost: they blame the new Student Council officers for their shame and take them hostage after a shooting rampage. Using technical skills learned while helping maintain the school network and doing their own home networks they commandeer the campus video system, thereby giving them an eye on the actions of law enforcement and use the Internet as a platform for their complaints. This exercise will delve into the use of IP-based video technology and the Internet and how they can be used by both law enforcement and bad actors. Wireless measures and countermeasures will also be described as well as other related technologies. This exercise will be lead by Tom Thienel.

   ACCESS EPG     Access Exercise Program Guide
         Password Protected

CYBER INFRASTRUCTURE TABLE TOP

The middle of winter in northern Wisconsin. The snowy woods are full of deer hunters. Many are 911 personnel and law enforcement officers. All are intent on bringing down that trophy buck with nothing more than their keen wits and a bow and arrow. Long dormant under their feet for tens of millions of years the Douglas Fault has chosen this day to shift; only slightly in the geological sense but enough to send a 50 foot wall of Lake Superior rushing unexpectedly toward towns and cities downstream. This scenario has all the devastating impact of the worst hurricane but with none of the advanced warning.

Only five minutes of the table top exercise will describe the disaster. The remaining 85 minutes will focus on the aftermath, especially focusing on cyber infrastructure and on the detailed technical planning and efforts which could have mitigated this unforeseen and unforeseeable disaster and a variety of other disasters which impact the infrastructure in the same way. This exercie will be lead by Bruce Hall.

   ACCESS EPG     Access Exercise Program Guide
         Password Protected

PUBLIC GATHERING CYBER TABLE TOP

Individuals who have entered the US fall into two categories: terrorists who have become neutralized because they like their new home and they have become assimilated and terrorists who are awaiting instructions. In this scenario the second group of terrorists, with some assistance from a member of the first group, execute a coordinated attack on a regional law enforcement and public safety conference and confound response efforts by exploiting wired and wireless systems.
The terrorists’ apparent objective: to confound and embarrass a wide range of public safety and law enforcement agencies in a public way thereby terrifying and terrorizing the community. As usual the terrorists are attempting to generate the most terror for the lowest cost. Among other technologies terrorists use prepaid cell phones and wireless IED-like devices to disrupt a regional public safety conference and kill a US government counter-terrorism official as well as inexpensive improvised systems to mislead 911 with faked calls originated from VoIP and appearing to come from the dead general’s home. This exercise will explore how such technologies can be used by terrorists, by law enforcement and how they can be detected and overcome. This exercise will be lead by Jim Cavanagh.

   ACCESS EPG     Access Exercise Program Guide
         Password Protected



These exercises are a joint effort of Wisconsin Emergency Management, La Crosse County WI, Wisconsin APCO, FEMA Homeland Security Exercise & Evaluation Program (HSEEP) and the Training Institute for Public Safety (911 TIPS).