There have certainly been a ton of cyber attacks on various web sites and Internet servers in the last couple of months, most of which have exposed the personal info of millions of people all over the world to the attackers. But there are even bigger threats that could affect more than just a person"s email address from being stolen. That"s why, according to Reuters, that the US military"s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (better known as DARPA) is creating a kind of simulated Internet to help fight both domestic and international cyber attacks.
The story says that the project is called the National Cyber Range and it"s actually been in the works for the last few years. The story states that it should be up and running in mid-2012 at a cost of $130 million. The project is designed to be "a replica of the Internet". It will be used by scientists to test out different ways to fight off cyber attacks.
The story states that two companies are competing to actually build the National Cyber Range. One is the Johns Hopkins University"s Applied Physics Laboratory and the other is Lockheed Martin which ironically found itself fighting off a cyber attack on its servers earlier this year. DARPA is supposed to pick one of these companies to create "a prototype test range during a yearlong test."
DARPA is also working on some other related projects. The story states that one of them is called CRASH (Clean-slate design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts) which is charged to create computer systems "that evolve over time, making them harder for an attacker to target."