APCERT drill on countering cyber attacks

The Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) completed its annual drill to test the response of leading Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) from Asia Pacific economies.

Members from the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation - Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT) took part in this annual drill for the third time and the European Government CSIRTs group (EGC) for the first time.

The theme of the APCERT Drill 2014 was 'Countering Cyber-ops (cyber operations) with Regional Coordination'.

The exercise reflected real incidents and problems on the internet. The teams undertook the task of tracing elements from developing stages of a Cyber-op. The stages culminated to a point where CSIRT-CERTs had to dismantle the infrastructure set up by hactivists, before a Denial of Service attack unfolds on a government service.

During the exercise, the participating teams activated and tested their incident response handling arrangements. This included interacting between CSIRT-CERT locally and internationally to dismantle the Denial of Service infrastructure from an analysis of a malicious smartphone application.

The incident response exercise, which was coordinated across many economies, reflected the strong cooperation among the economies. It also validated the enhanced communication protocols, technical abilities and quality of incident responses that APCERT fosters in assuring internet security and safety.

The CSIRT teams from 16 economies of APCERT which took part in the exercise were Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, People's Republic of China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

From the external parties, CSIRT teams from three economies (Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria) of the OIC-CERT and a CSIRT from Germany from the EGC took part.

The Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Response Team and Coordination Centre (CERT-CC) took part in the drill for the seventh consecutive year.

Sri Sanka CERT-CC with its Asian counterparts continues to prevent and combat cyber crime. Sri Lanka CERT-CC also plays an active role at APCERT and serves on several working groups.

This is in addition to serving on the main organising committee for the Annual General Meeting, which will be held in Taipei.

APCERT was set up by leading and national Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) from the economies of the Asia Pacific region.