May 11 – Code name “Locked Shield 2015” is one of the largest cyber-war simulations in the world. It took place in recent days at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. The massive exercise saw the participation of sixteen countries, who staged a violent cyberattack against the imaginary nation of Berylia. And Italy was part of this “adventure” with C4 Command of the General Staff of Defense and a group of experts from the University of Pisa. Participants were divided into 16 blue teams, one per nation, and one red team, made up with the best experts in NATO. Each blue team had to defend Berylia computers and the computer network from the red team’s attack, while a panel of judges had to assess what was happening and assign scores. “Our role – said Fabrizio Baiardi of the University of Pisa – was to apply the Haruspex tools to analyze the computer network environment of the ‘battlefield’, and to provide the Italian team with the correct changes to create resilience in the network. Since 2014, this has been our second participation in the Locked Shield exercises – continued Fabrizio Baiardi – and this allowed us to get extremely useful feed back to evaluate and improve the capacity and effectiveness of the tools we are developing in the field of computer security. Rarely computer networks are attacked by such high level experts.” Currently, the research team led by Professor Baiardi and Engineer Montecucco is made up of seven people, including researchers, scholars, graduate students and students working on their master’s thesis. (Red)
