http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.ca/2013/…
http://blogs.reuters.com/unstructured…
http://www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles…
http://www.katu.com/news/tech/US-bank…
http://www.sifma.org/services/bcp/cyb…
Cybersecurity Exercise: Quantum Dawn 2
Exercise Date: Thursday July 18, 2013
Quantum Dawn 2 is a cybersecurity exercise to test incident response, resolution and coordination processes for the financial services sector and the individual member firms to a street-wide cyber attack.
http://www.sifma.org/services/bcp/cybersecurity-exercise–quantum-dawn-2/
Quantum Dawn 2: US banks on cyber-attack defense
It’s a war game, Wall Street style.
Banks large and small are girding for an elaborate drill this week that will test how they would fare if hackers unleashed a powerful and coordinated attack against them.
The exercise is called “Quantum Dawn 2,” and if the name sounds like a video game, it’s also meant to convey the seriousness of the threat.
Cyber-attacks on the banking industry are growing more frequent and sophisticated and the list of assailants is ever-changing: crime bosses who want money, “hacktivists” who want to make political statements, foreign governments that want to spy on U.S. companies. A successful, widespread attack on the industry would shake confidence in the banking system, and the possibility has banks and regulators on edge.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/quantum-dawn-2-us-banks-cyber-attack-defense-6C10648551
Wall Street goes to war with hackers in Quantum Dawn 2 simulation
These drills have become more important for Wall Street as financial firms have faced more frequent and sophisticated attacks on their networks. A couple of months ago, the FBI gave security clearances to dozens of bank executives to inform them about organized attacks against their systems.
Some attacks are evident, like distributed denial of service, or DDoS attacks, that shut down bank web sites or otherwise disrupt their operations. But even more nefarious are hidden bugs that hackers try to install into banks’ proprietary systems without them knowing, said Schimmeck. The hackers then lay in wait for vulnerable moments – like a natural disaster or market disruption [OR DRILL?] – to attack.
…
“For Quantum Dawn 1, there was a cyber attack coordinated with armed gunmen running around Lower Manhattan, trying to gain entry to the exchanges and really just try to blow things up,” said Schimmeck.
In that operation, participants were all in one central location at a conference table, comparing notes and making decisions as they learned about various threats. In Quantum Dawn 2, they will all be stationed at their own offices, communicating with one another through emails and phone calls as they do in real life. A SIFMA marketing document says this drill will try to instill “greater ‘uncertainty’ and ‘fog of war’ for all players.”
http://www.scoop.it/t/cyberwar-by-jesus-cozar/p/4003371286/wall-street-goes-to-war-with-hackers-in-quantum-dawn-2-simulation
(REUT… is banned so had to find a different source)
Wall Street Prepping for ‘Quantum Dawn 2′ Cyber Drill
At 9 a.m. Eastern next Friday, participants will log on, from their offices, to a closed system developed by the Department of Homeland Security. No one knows exactly what kind of attack will hit, but once it does, they will have to coordinate with corporate and government partners to battle their virtual foes.
Schimmeck said Quantum Dawn 2 is an exercise rather than a test, and there won’t be any winners or losers, per se. When the drill concludes around 2:30 p.m. that day, organizers hope to identify things that can be improved upon, and how to carry that out. Are the firms sharing information with one another? Is there an easier way to do something?
Schimmeck stressed that “what makes cyber so unique is that you have a living, breathing adversary on the other side.” You can’t anticipate something as you might with storm preparedness, for example, he said.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2420587,00.asp
Side Note: ”At 9 a.m. Eastern next Friday”. The drill is on Thursday (9am-2:30pm EST) so I really hope that “Friday” is a typo…
Then you have…
PayPal accidentally makes man a QUADRILLIONAIRE after transferring $92,233,720,368,547,800 into his account
Mr Reynolds, from Delaware County, opened his monthly-statement by email on Friday to discover that his balance was a whopping $92,233,720,368,547,800.
…
After overcoming his shock, he logged onto the PayPal site and saw that his balance was listed as zero.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2366557/PayPal-accidentally-makes-man-QUADRILLIONAIRE-transferring-92-233-720-368-547-800-account.html
And a previous warning of what to possibly look out for…
[link to www.youtube.com]
—
With that I simply want to point out a POSSIBLE scenario based on the cyber security drill named Quantum Dawn 2.
1. The cyber security drill starts without issue as everything is setup and the simulated attacks begin.
2. The participants response to the simulated attacks accordingly.
3. During this time a program(virus) logs all weaknesses and slow response points throughout the entire network (test for weaknesses… which is the open goal of the drill).
4. The drill finishes without issue and the simulated system is taken offline. No major issues.
5. The following day Anonymous do multiple small scale attacks on the same banking institutions involved in the drill (nothing major, just surface noise).
6. During this time program/virus mimics the previous days actions using the previously found vulnerabilities from the drill (before they were able to get fixed) to gain full access to the needed systems & admin.
7. The program/virus then creates MASKED (fake visual) balances for ALL accounts on ALL networks it has access to.
8. It then starts moving the background money (unmasked… real) into a single account (important).
9. The banks experience minor issues at first (as not much money is moved yet) and brush it off as related to the Anonymous cyber attack that is taking place (small scale).
10. During this time the money for ALL accounts that can be accessed are transferred out of that 1 single account in a (massive) lump sum and transferred directly to a PayPal account.
11. The bank issues become more and more apparent as more and more money is not actually where it should be (but since it is masked to show full value they don’t know this yet). Once the missing funds start becoming more and more apparent all hell breaks loose on their system and they are forced to shut it down for several days (Fri/Sat/Sun) to investigate wtf is going on (everything appears fine on the surface, but nothing is working right).
12. At first they assume it is it to do with the minor hack attacks, then draw the conclusion it might be a minor bug caused by the drill (a disconnect or unsync of some databases or something minor) the day prior, the eventually find out the money really isn’t their (masked) with no trace of where it went.
13. The real money which is now on a single PayPal account, is then covered up via the same masking type scam, by mimicking the PayPal QUADRILLIONAIRE error making it so that the 2nd massive PayPal transaction (in this case real money…) would also be written off as part of the same “masking” error that happened with the Quarillionaire (which is why it would be important the real money is transferred from a single account to a single account… to mimic the 1 giant lump sum that the origional error caused). With this PayPal could then deny the transaction ever existed and some PayPal account that exists but noone knows about is free to do whatever it wishes with the money without anyone even knowing it still exists.
14. The banks and authorities would then blame anonymous (a faceless group with unknown amount of members… so anyone they want) saying they must of had a dormant virus on the system that exploited a vulnerability in the system to gain access to critical admin levels likely during the drills actual setup. They would likely then say they do not believe the money was actually stolen, but rather it was destroyed (politically motivated cyber terrorism).
15. These detailed would then be kept fairly quite to the public for as long as possible, and once announced (Monday) cause an unstoppable chain reaction within the global financial markets.
I just want to point out I HIGHLY doubt this will occur and I only bring it up as a warning of a possibility to watch for because as unlikely as this scenario is, it is possible, and I wouldn’t put it past these bastards to try.
It also doesn’t help that this is the 2nd running of this specific drill either… and if you know how the drill gone live script has been used in the past you would notice… they never pull off the real op on the drills first run-through. In ALL cases that a drill has gone live, previous versions of the “drill” itself were run prior as practice. The reason for this is to basically test the water, make sure everything is in place, know strength & weaknesses, make sure you didn’t miss anything… basically a dry run to confirm everything will turn out as close as possible to the wanted/expected result.
In the case of 9/11 it’s primary aspects were ran ahead of time with Operation Amalgam Virgo which ran from June 1-4, 2001. Other primary drills on the day of 9/11 were also in their second running (had been per-practiced) and played a vital role in the days events such as the second running of the Tripod drill (Tripod II) which because of that drill specifically they had a backup official command post setup outside of Building 7 to use after the attack takes place, the second running of Timely Alert (Timely Alert II) a large scale chemical attack response drill, Global Guardian an annual mass coordinated continuity of government (Cog) drill that had been ran for years prior and the list keeps going… Whats the common the theme in all of them? The drills involved weren’t being run for the first time… they weeded out any issues before running them live by running them previously to test them first.
This idea echoes with the Boston event (Urban Shield Boston Medical Response Drill), where a 2012 drill ran with the theme of backpack bombs placed at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (on the EXACT opposite side of the road of where they went off). In 2013 the same drill ran again as part of a 24 hour medical aimed drill, added to Bostons annual Emergency Management protocols as part of their acceptance to participate in the Urban Shield program, and to separate the medical response & law enforcement aspects so the scenarios could cater better to each group by them being drilled at different times with directly specialized scenarios.
The April 19 Boston event was then the 2nd half of the overall program (Urban Shield Boston Law Enforcement Drill) which again ran the year prior to test the drill platform (2012) before going live with it (2013).
Urban Shield Boston 2012:
Drill Date: November 3, 2012
The drills, which included hostage situations, HazMat incidents and a movie theater shooting, brought together emergency officials from the city, state and federal government, as well as from the Boston Police, SWAT teams, the Fire Department, EMS, local hospitals, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the Coast Guard. All in all, there were over 600 participants in the November drill, from over fifty different departments and agencies.
http://www.strategic-operations.com/news/article/2013/05/03/strategic-operations-helps-boston-disaster-preparedness
Urban Shield Boston 2013:
Drill Date: June 15, 2013 [ran instead on April 15 & 19]
Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression, according to a copy of the plans obtained by the Boston Globe.
But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion. The chaos of the Boston Marathon bombings disrupted plans for the exercise, initially scheduled for this weekend, forcing police to postpone. Now officials must retool aspects of the training.
“The real thing happened before we were able to execute,” said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the planned exercise.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/07/before-police-could-plan-for-terrorist-attack-real-thing-happened/ufxjb9O0RXyzVZNPFyGkiI/story.html
Side Note: Since the unofficial version ran 2 months prior they decided to cancel the official drill date since the event ran early.
I never have a bad feeling about a drill being ran for the first time… but once a drill is run once it open to be used as a FF going forward.
TruthNow
With that I simply want to point out a POSSIBLE scenario based on the cyber security drill named Quantum Dawn 2.
1. The cyber security drill starts without issue as everything is setup and the simulated attacks begin.
2. The participants response to the simulated attacks accordingly.
3. During this time a program(virus) logs all weaknesses and slow response points throughout the entire network (test for weaknesses… which is the open goal of the drill).
4. The drill finishes without issue and the simulated system is taken offline. No major issues.
5. The following day Anonymous do multiple small scale attacks on the same banking institutions involved in the drill (nothing major, just surface noise).
6. During this time program/virus mimics the previous days actions using the previously found vulnerabilities from the drill (before they were able to get fixed) to gain full access to the needed systems & admin.
7. The program/virus then creates MASKED (fake visual) balances for ALL accounts on ALL networks it has access to.
8. It then starts moving the background money (unmasked… real) into a single account (important).
9. The banks experience minor issues at first (as not much money is moved yet) and brush it off as related to the Anonymous cyber attack that is taking place (small scale).
10. During this time the money for ALL accounts that can be accessed are transferred out of that 1 single account in a (massive) lump sum and transferred directly to a PayPal account.
11. The bank issues become more and more apparent as more and more money is not actually where it should be (but since it is masked to show full value they don’t know this yet). Once the missing funds start becoming more and more apparent all hell breaks loose on their system and they are forced to shut it down for several days (Fri/Sat/Sun) to investigate wtf is going on (everything appears fine on the surface, but nothing is working right).
12. At first they assume it is it to do with the minor hack attacks, then draw the conclusion it might be a minor bug caused by the drill (a disconnect or unsync of some databases or something minor) the day prior, the eventually find out the money really isn’t their (masked) with no trace of where it went.
13. The real money which is now on a single PayPal account, is then covered up via the same masking type scam, by mimicking the PayPal QUADRILLIONAIRE error making it so that the 2nd massive PayPal transaction (in this case real money…) would also be written off as part of the same “masking” error that happened with the Quarillionaire (which is why it would be important the real money is transferred from a single account to a single account… to mimic the 1 giant lump sum that the origional error caused). With this PayPal could then deny the transaction ever existed and some PayPal account that exists but noone knows about is free to do whatever it wishes with the money without anyone even knowing it still exists.
14. The banks and authorities would then blame anonymous (a faceless group with unknown amount of members… so anyone they want) saying they must of had a dormant virus on the system that exploited a vulnerability in the system to gain access to critical admin levels likely during the drills actual setup. They would likely then say they do not believe the money was actually stolen, but rather it was destroyed (politically motivated cyber terrorism).
15. These detailed would then be kept fairly quite to the public for as long as possible, and once announced (Monday) cause an unstoppable chain reaction within the global financial markets.
I just want to point out I HIGHLY doubt this will occur and I only bring it up as a warning of a possibility to watch for because as unlikely as this scenario is, it is possible, and I wouldn’t put it past these bastards to try.
It also doesn’t help that this is the 2nd running of this specific drill either… and if you know how the drill gone live script has been used in the past you would notice… they never pull off the real op on the drills first run-through. In ALL cases that a drill has gone live, previous versions of the “drill” itself were run prior as practice. The reason for this is to basically test the water, make sure everything is in place, know strength & weaknesses, make sure you didn’t miss anything… basically a dry run to confirm everything will turn out as close as possible to the wanted/expected result.
In the case of 9/11 it’s primary aspects were ran ahead of time with Operation Amalgam Virgo which ran from June 1-4, 2001. Other primary drills on the day of 9/11 were also in their second running (had been per-practiced) and played a vital role in the days events such as the second running of the Tripod drill (Tripod II) which because of that drill specifically they had a backup official command post setup outside of Building 7 to use after the attack takes place, the second running of Timely Alert (Timely Alert II) a large scale chemical attack response drill, Global Guardian an annual mass coordinated continuity of government (Cog) drill that had been ran for years prior and the list keeps going… Whats the common the theme in all of them? The drills involved weren’t being run for the first time… they weeded out any issues before running them live by running them previously to test them first.
This idea echoes with the Boston event (Urban Shield Boston Medical Response Drill), where a 2012 drill ran with the theme of backpack bombs placed at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (on the EXACT opposite side of the road of where they went off). In 2013 the same drill ran again as part of a 24 hour medical aimed drill, added to Bostons annual Emergency Management protocols as part of their acceptance to participate in the Urban Shield program, and to separate the medical response & law enforcement aspects so the scenarios could cater better to each group by them being drilled at different times with directly specialized scenarios.
The April 19 Boston event was then the 2nd half of the overall program (Urban Shield Boston Law Enforcement Drill) which again ran the year prior to test the drill platform (2012) before going live with it (2013).
Urban Shield Boston 2012:
Drill Date: November 3, 2012
The drills, which included hostage situations, HazMat incidents and a movie theater shooting, brought together emergency officials from the city, state and federal government, as well as from the Boston Police, SWAT teams, the Fire Department, EMS, local hospitals, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the Coast Guard. All in all, there were over 600 participants in the November drill, from over fifty different departments and agencies.
http://www.strategic-operations.com/news/article/2013/05/03/strategic-operations-helps-boston-disaster-preparedness
Urban Shield Boston 2013:
Drill Date: June 15, 2013 [ran instead on April 15 & 19]
Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression, according to a copy of the plans obtained by the Boston Globe.
But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion. The chaos of the Boston Marathon bombings disrupted plans for the exercise, initially scheduled for this weekend, forcing police to postpone. Now officials must retool aspects of the training.
“The real thing happened before we were able to execute,” said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the planned exercise.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/07/before-police-could-plan-for-terrorist-attack-real-thing-happened/ufxjb9O0RXyzVZNPFyGkiI/story.html
Side Note: Since the unofficial version ran 2 months prior they decided to cancel the official drill date since the event ran early.
I never have a bad feeling about a drill being ran for the first time… but once a drill is run once it open to be used as a FF going forward.
TruthNow
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