Inside FBI’s 22,000 sq ft fake town for cyber war training

The FBI has revealed a 22,000sq ft fake town it uses for cyber war training. The indoor facility features realistic real-world buildings including a grocery store, hotel, courthouse and gas station.

There are also fully furnished homes, a power company, a video games arcade, and a data center running 200 servers. The FBI says the ‘technical training environment’ is designed to prepare agents, analysts and forensic specialists for investigations that increasingly involve digital evidence.

Each space is wired with functioning systems, networks and devices designed to behave as they would in the real world. Since opening last year, the facility has trained more than 1,400 students, including FBI personnel and partners from other agencies.

The FBI said this month: “The FBI’s Kinetic Cyber Range in Huntsville, Alabama, resembles a small town with everything a small town has. “But despite its size, it plays a massive role in preparing the next generation of cyber investigators for real world situations and the real obstacles they will face in the field.”

A training exercise in April saw students dealing with a simulated ransomware attack locking down a hospital network. They also practiced extracting a car’s electronic control unit—the car’s digital brain—that could help reconstruct where a vehicle has been, how it was used, and who may have been behind the wheel.

Dave Beachboard, who manages the FBI’s Kinetic Cyber Range, said: “This is about as real as it’s going to get before people go out in the field. “We try to keep the scenarios as real as possible. Everything’s based off of past case studies.”

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