The Naval Academy fielded a team that used
all defensive plays. Game
rules wouldn't let the Naval Academy team attack invaders, only deter
them from creating havoc.
During the game, the Naval Academy teamed up with the Air Force
Academy, the Military Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the Air Force
Institute of Technology, and the Merchant Marine Academy to form a
computer network. This network allowed the academies and institute to
share a chat room, teleconferencing and video teleconferencing,
sending and receiving e-mails, file sharing, Websites and name
resolution.
Of course, game may be a slight misnomer. The academies and institute
were really engaged in the sixth annual Cyber Defense Exercise.
Sponsored by the National Security Agency, the exercise required
sharing information through a computer network in much the same way
that an alliance of nations or perhaps a corporation might share
information.
. . .
[J]ust to keep the exercise challenging, a few natural
disasters were thrown in that brought everyone's computer servers down
and tested the team's ability to get the servers up and running again.
. . .
Midn. 2/C Sean Sullivan is interested in troubleshooting computers.
The technical leader in charge of the network, he grew up breaking and
fixing computers. This summer he will be one of five Naval Academy
midshipmen to intern at the National Security Agency. He was concerned
about hackers trying to overload the system with information. To
prevent this, he helped create an alternate computer system that would
mimic the real one, hoping that the hackers would break into this
"honey pot" instead of the real system.
"We're trying to distract them from the real thing," said Midn. 2/C
Micah Akin. "We've made the real computer look like the honey pot and
the honey pot look like the real computer."
. . .
"I've never done anything like this before," admitted Midn. 1/C
Jonathan Kindel, who was glad to get the experience.
"The same skills that we learn here can be transcribed to keep our
computers secure in the fleet," he said. Kindel says that gathering
small packets of information is like putting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
together.
"You can get an amazingly accurate picture of defense capabilities by
gathering small bits of information here and there," he said. "That's
why it's so important that we learn to safeguard them."
That was another eye opening part of the exercise, learning that
threats from within can be just as debilitating to computer operations
as outside threats.
