The IWAR Range: a Laboratory for Undergraduate Information Assurance Education

1. The IWAR Range: a Laboratory for Undergraduate Information Assurance Education By Maj. Joseph Schafer (Naval War College), Daniel J. Ragsdale and John R. Surdu (Information Technology and Operations Center, USMA), and Curtis A Carver (Texas A & M University) Presented by Allen Stone

2. Information Warfare “Any electronic attack intended to disrupt a computer system” – Panda and Yalamanchili • IWAR Range: Attack/Defend Network for Educational Purposes • Very Literal Significance: The Defense of the United States

3. Objectives • Types of Warfare • Analog vs. Electronic • The Lab • Background • Setup • Classroom Use • Process to Create a Range • Future Work • Information Warfare Example (Black Hat)

4. Types of Warfare • Military • “Nationalism” • Criminal • Industrial • Convoluted • “Idealism” • Juvenile

5. IWAR range • Information Warfare Analysis and Research Laboratory • Isolated Laboratory • Heterogeneous • Modeled After Production Systems • Exploits and Tools are Weapons

6. Background • Technology • Overly Prepared or Not Utilizing What is There • Y2K • Information Assurance Course (USMA) • Future Military Leaders • Know Your Enemy • Ethical Issues with Malicious Coding

7. Electronic “Range” • Conventional Weapon Range • Inside vs. Outside • 4 Networks • Gray (Attack) • Gold (Target) • Green (Tactical Command) • Black (Faculty Research)

8. The Making of IWAR • Minimize Misuse • Isolation • On-Hand Resources • Rescued Machines • Search Boxes • Compressed Time Table • All in One Lab • Divided Room • KVM Switches • Services • Total Cost: $20,000

9. IWAR Lite • 1:10 Cost-Value Ratio could have been even better • Rescued Systems • OS Costs • Abbreviated Architecture

10. Worth the Effort? • Hands-On vs. PowerPoint and Whiteboard • Cadets Also Must Learn Defense • Largely Positive Feedback

11. Future Work • Branching Out • Rebuilding IWAR • ACM Chapter • Fun, Unthreatening, Un-Graded

12. The Middle East Cyberwar - 2001 • Web Defacement and Denial of Service • Propaganda • Poisoned Pen Tactics • Less than 100 Core Hackers • Thousands of Volunteers and Conscripts • Emotional, Ideological, Patriotic, Religious • Israel, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Qatar, U.A.E., U.S. • Spread

13. References • “The IWAR Range: A Laboratory for Undergraduate Information Assurance Education” – Schafer, Ragsdale, Surdu, and Carver – “Proceedings of the Sixth Annual CCSC Northeastern Conference on the Journal of Computing in Small Colleges” – Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges • “Cyber Jihad and the Globalization of Warfare: Computer Networks as a Battle Ground in the Middle East andBeyond” – Kenneth Geers (NCIS) and Dr. Peter Feaver (Duke University) – Black Hat USA 2004 Briefings and Training, July 24-29, Las Vegas, NV • “Transaction Fusion in the Wake of Information Warfare” – Brajendra Panda and Rajesh Yalamanchili (University of North Dakota) – Proceedings of the 2001 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing – ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing