Cybersecurity: the FBI launches a virtual city simulator to train agents to tackle digital crime
The Kinetic Cyber Range has opened in Huntsville, Alabama: a 2,000-square-metre hangar that replicates real-life scenarios. Over 1,400 investigators are attending training sessions in smart homes and data centres to learn how to seize digital evidence and detect online threats.
There are houses, of course, a grocery shop and a petrol station. But there’s also a hospital and a data centre. In short, a typical small town from the mid-2020s. Except that if you look up at the sky, you can see the ceiling of a structure covering over 2,000 square metres – a building housing a replica of a town that serves a specific purpose: to train FBI agents to deal with technology-related threats.
It is called Kinetic Cyber Range, is located in Huntsville, Alabama, and has been operational since February last year. The federal agency has recently explained how it works by publishing a video on YouTube. Whether it’s dismantling a car to extract the control unit and reconstruct the vehicle’s movements, or learning to navigate the aisles of a server room, agents here are trained to deal with technology-related security threats. That is to say, the threats they might encounter in their day-to-day work.
For example, there is a scenario in which students move around a house full of devices connected to the internet and decide what to seize as it is relevant to the investigation and what to leave behind. In another, they serve a search warrant on a company and work with the system administrators to access data hidden within the company’s network.
The aim is to put into practice what, until a few months ago, was only taught in a classroom, without any practical experience in the field. And indeed, the aim is not to turn FBI agents into an army of nerds, but to ensure that all operational staff have the basic knowledge to use digital technologies in their investigative work. Hence the idea of creating a series of environments in which operatives can practise handling the technological devices they will subsequently have to deal with during investigations. More than 1,400 agents – not just from the FBI – have passed through the Kinetic Cyber Range in the first 15 months since it opened.
