The CHIRONEX 2023-1 is the first cyber exercise for the Italian Navy conducted in collaboration with a private company according to a model already used by the Italian Air Force as part of the Cyber Eagle in partnership with the company DEAS (Difesa ed Analisi Sistemi) S.p.A..
The name is borrowed from the scientific term of the Australian jellyfish, Chironex fleckeri (better known as sea wasp or cubomedusa), the most poisonous jellyfish in the world. The danger of poison cells enclosed in tentacles is comparable to the danger of the cyber threat in the digital world. The external beauty of the marine animal is comparable to the majesty of the global network which, as for the jellyfish in its tentacles, hides subtle elements of danger in its digital filaments.
The exercise stems from the need to meet the requirement to increase awareness and sensitivity in users of the unclassified network of the Italian Navy to the immanent cyber threat, as well as to verify the ability of the personnel of the cyber specialist component to face and counter an attack if the latter is successful.
The DEAS company has played a fundamental role in greatly increasing the level of realism of the simulated cyber threat by building the attack vectors according to the classic cyber kill chain paradigm and ensuring the entire intrusion process according to a spear phishing approach. It also ensured the necessary support in the application of the most effective active defensive tactics and good cyber resilience practices.
The exercise was divided into four phases of increasing difficulty:
- two distinct massive phishing campaigns, i.e. the use of an artifact email that refers to a malicious site through an additional link;
- Two specific activities aimed at a limited number of assets (spear phishing) divided into two subphases:
- an attack for the inoculation of a Malware (created ad hoc, dormant and activated on order)
- one of management of the cyber incident, which is linked to a subsequent kinetic action by the Special Forces on an alleged platform identified as the origin of the threat.
The attack scenario saw in its implementation phase the opposition of the actions of a Red Team (Attack Team) and a Blue Team (Defense Team). The CHIRONEX 2023-1 opens a cycle of exercises that will test the evolutionary path in the field of cyber security launched by the Italian Armed Forces which will include the use of Artificial Intelligence solutions for the timely search for potential cyber threats and the analysis and classification of Malware. In addition, space will also be given to research and study of dual operational scenarios of attack and defense.
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