UNCCT-ITU Cyber Drill 2020 – Terrorist Threat Simulation Cyber Exercise
5 November 2020 – The UNCCT Cybersecurity and New Technologies Programme concluded its first global scenario-based training exercise as part of the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) annual Cyber Drill. This year, due to the COVID pandemic, the drill was conducted online allowing an expanded scope of global participation. 34 Member States nominated over 130 participants from their National CERTS/CSIRTS, and law enforcement agencies to participated in the exercise.
In preparation for the ITU Cyber Drill, UNCCT delivered a two-hour training session on the structured methodologies to perform counter-terrorism investigations online. The participant’s skills were tested during the scenario-based exercise simulating the investigation process aimed at identifying and locating an extremist group responsible for perpetrating a ransomware attack on a fictitious hospital.
Concretely, this challenge gave participants an opportunity to test the efficiency of their knowledge on Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) techniques in investigating the leads about alleged perpetrators. Evidence collected from social media, cryptocurrency blockchains, the dark web, and other internet sources can help law enforcement officials attribute the attack and bring those responsible to justice.
The overall aim of the UNCCT exercise during ITU’s Cyber Drill was to raise participants’ awareness of the value of internet resources to prevent, identify and counter terrorist cyber threats, and to build their capacities on the subject through a simulated cyber-attack exercise.
The ITU Global Cyber Drill brings together Computer Emergency and Incident Response Teams (CERTs, CSIRTs), Security Operations Centers (SOCs), and government entities dealing with cybersecurity together in a unified exercise to build global response and recovery capabilities by testing their operational resiliency and raising awareness of current cyber threats.
This event re-affirmed that the “whole-of-UN” approach to Member State engagement is the most effective way to counter terrorism in the digital space.