It is the government’s concept of a really poor day: Washington’s Metro subway trains shut down. Seaport computers in New York go dark. Bloggers reveal locations of railcars with hazardous materials. Airport control towers are disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid is found in the Tube, London’s subway.

And that was just for starters.

The fictitious worldly calamities were among dozens of detailed, mock disasters confronting officials in rapid succession in the U.S. government’s biggest-ever “Cyber Storm” war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. The Homeland protection agency ran the exercise to pop quiz the America’s hacker defenses, with help from the State, Defense and Justice departments, the CIA, the National safety measure Agency and others.

The laundry list of fictional catastrophes, which include hundreds of citizens on “No Fly” lists arriving suddenly at U.S. airport ticket counters, is significant considering it suggests what kind of

real-world trouble keeps folks in the White House awake at night.

Imagined villains include hackers, bloggers, even reporters. After mock electronic attacks overwhelmed computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unspecified “major news network” airing reports about the attackers refused to reveal its sources to the government. Other simulated reporters were duped into spreading “believable but misleading” data that worsened fallout by confusing the public and financial markets, according to the government’s files.

The $3 million, the invitation-only war game simulated what the United States described as plausible attacks by five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers. The government is organizing another multimillion-dollar wargame, Cyber Storm 2, to take place in early March.

“They point out where your expectations of your capabilities may be overstated,” Homeland protection Secretary Michael Chertoff told the AP. “They may…

Orginal post by Top Tech News