Royal Navy cyber warriors battle against attacks on allied task groups during Australian exercise

More than 150 cyber experts converged on the Australian Defence Force’s Cyber Command in Canberra to test each other’s mettle and strengthen their combined ability to fight off threats to critical infrastructure.

Exercise Cyber Sentinel brought together participants from the UK, hosts Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, which together operate under the Five Eyes alliance that sees each nation share vital intelligence information.

The Royal Navy deployed a Cyber Team from the Portsmouth-based Maritime C5ISR Support Unit, which delivers and supports intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance equipment and information services across the navy.

The team of five from the UK were joined by a US Army intelligence analyst and an Australian RAAF network defender to fight off attacks on a multinational task group of ships and land bases.
The first week of the exercise saw the team analyse their networks, looking for vulnerabilities and configuring what they’d need to fight off attacks.

The UK team – based on a fictional HMS Prince of Wales – had three major networks to defend, ranging from an admin network, a command-and-control station, and an Operational Technology network (which includes ships’ systems).

Attacks saw networks overridden and fuel dumped in the sea, putting task group operations at risk, with a malicious USB stick attached to a network discovered as the primary cause.

The cyber groups tightened their security to prevent further attacks, but they were kept on their toes when a network was flooded with data to disrupt temperature sensors causing fires on board ships.

Ship’s damage control teams tackled the fire, while the cyber teams worked to remove hostile actors from the network.

The cyber battle reached its finale crescendo when cyber teams carried out ‘Operation Silver Kiwi’ – a coordinated attack to drive hostile actors away from networks, locking out ‘enemy’ forces in a display of technical ability and coordinated action. Exercise director Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Corrigan, of Cyber Forces Group, said this year’s iteration built upon the previous Australia-US exercise by extending invitations to Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

“The purpose of this exercise was to conduct rehearsal activities for Cyberspace Force and task elements in a mission-relevant terrain against a real-world scenario and threat actors,” he said.
“It played a critical role in our ability to assess and validate operational preparedness, including concepts, capabilities, and tactics.”

Cyber Sentinel provided a fantastic opportunity for the MCSU team to practise skills and established a blueprint for how the UK might run a command and control organisation when it deploys forces on operations around the world.