Overview[]
In July 2002, the U.S. Naval War College hosted a war game called Digital Pearl Harbor to develop a scenario for a coordinated cyberterrorism event, where mock attacks by computer security experts against critical infrastructure systems simulated state-sponsored cyberwarfare. The simulated cyberattacks determined that the most vulnerable infrastructure computer systems were the Internet itself, and the computer systems that are part of the financial infrastructure. It was also determined that attempts to cripple the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure would be unsuccessful because built-in system redundancy would prevent damage from becoming too widespread. The conclusion of the exercise was that a "Digital Pearl Harbor" in the United States was only a slight possibility.