Israel’s Finance Ministry runs cyber ‘war game’ to simulate financial sector attack

The Israeli Finance Ministry ran the scenario with nine other nations over 10 days in early December, utilising cyber security information and data collected via the dark web to inform the simulated events.

Israel’s Finance Ministry ran a simulated “war game” to test the international finance sector in early December, with 10 countries participating over the course of the 10-day challenge.

The event, which took up to a year to plan, was informed by data collected on the dark web and simulated numerous styles of attacks. The attacks then resulted in a range financial consequences that the the nations had to overcome.

According to media outlets, the simulation included representatives from Israel, the US, UK, UAE, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Thailand, the IMF and the World Bank.

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Not only did the war game seek to mitigate the incidents through enhanced cyber security protocols, but also sought to increase international financial responses to a successful cyber attack. According to Reuters, such financial responses are expected to include targeted bank holidays, debt flexibility and strategic currency manoeuvres.

The war games are part of a global trend with threat actors attempting high-scale cyber attacks.

Just this week, Assistant Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie and the Australian Cyber Security Centre warned that Australian business and households must urgently patch their applications and software products as malicious cyber adversaries conduct thousands of scans in search of the Log4j software vulnerability.

The ACSC has reported it is seeing malicious actors attempting to find Australian entities who remain vulnerable.

Thousands of software products that use this common piece of computer code are at risk, and many are yet to be fixed. Cyber attackers can break into an organisation’s systems, steal user passwords and login details, extract sensitive data, and infect its networks with malicious software causing widespread business interruption, if not fixed.