Cyber War Games Train Military in Cyber Warfare

Preparing service members for cyber warfare is a growing priority for the U.S. military. Cyber attackers and advanced persistent threats (APT)—threat actors that seek unauthorized access to computer networks—represent a significant danger to national infrastructure and the security of our nation. The military needs state-of-the-art cyber spaces where warfighters can stage cyber war games and develop adaptive strategies for neutralizing all manner of cyber attacks.

In Booz Allen’s San Antonio office, a team of cyber experts, network specialists, software developers, and data scientists anticipated this need and developed Cyber AI Simulation and Training Live Environment (CASTLE), a leading-edge artificial intelligence training platform. CASTLE creates high-fidelity representations of the large-scale networks that military cyber operators are responsible for defending. It empowers service members to test their skills against one another and an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven adversary, which mimics the behaviors of APTs and hackers menacing critical networks.

Stopping cyber attacks requires cyber operators to combine traditional defensive measures with offensive cyber tactics. Depending on a “react-and-defend” approach is no longer sufficient. Cyber operators must be well trained in threat hunting, a proactive strategy that identifies common vulnerabilities and eliminates hidden APTs before an attack occurs. Failure to engage in threat hunting increases the risk that the cyber attacks of tomorrow will go unnoticed.

Training military cyber operators in this dual-threat approach poses a significant challenge. Most cyber training simulations use linearly defined exercises that don’t adequately replicate the complexity of real-world cyber networks. Their lack of customization makes them heavy on repetition. As APTs and hackers develop more sophisticated means of infiltrating vulnerable networks, military cyber operators need exposure to more advanced training simulations if they want to keep pace with the speed at which cyber threats are evolving. 

To create CASTLE, our San Antonio office assembled a cross-disciplinary team with extensive experience in open technologies, systems engineering, cybersecurity design, and industry-leading AI.

The team designed CASTLE so that it can digitally recreate any large-scale network, like the ones the military defends, using that network’s metadata. They embedded an AI-adversary that is capable of emulating the behaviors of APTs and can dynamically produce multiple training scenarios in real time. Practicing against an AI-adversary helps military cyber operators strengthen their offensive and defensive cyber tradecraft. It equips them for the realities of modern cyber warfare.

CASTLE’s ability to recreate large-scale cyber networks provides military cyber operators with a diversity of highly-detailed training scenarios. CASTLE can also integrate smaller, custom cyber ranges within its larger arena to suit a user’s specific requirements. This allows military cyber operators to stage complex cyber war games and prepare to combat APTs and hackers in real-world networks.

Now, the CASTLE team is working on a virtual reality (VR) capability that will allow multiple players to wear standard-issue VR headsets and interact with simulated networks in real time from geographically dispersed locations. CASTLE epitomizes our commitment to helping warfighters train as they fight and stay one step ahead of the adversaries they face, on both the physical and virtual battlefields.