Fake hackers beat Homeland Security

The exercise, which was held in February, revealed huge gaps in the way that government agencies and companies handled such attacks.

The hackers managed to infiltrate computer servers, crash the Federal Aviation Administration's control system, deface newspaper Web sites and threaten power outages.

The report, made public yesterday, said that responders could not work out if the series of simulated hackings were isolated or part of a coordinated assault. Organisations involved made the mistake of treating incidents as individual and discrete events, rather than seeing a bigger picture.

Homeland security undersecretary, George Foresman, said it was clear that the department could not yet measure America's cybersecurity preparedness. Probably because it is impossible to measure zero with a conventional ruler.

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