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Wall Street Is Mock-Hacking Itself to Prepare for a Potential Cyberattack

I can't shake the image of hundreds of bankers and government officials running around in skyscrapers trying to thwart Chinese cyber-espionage.

When 50 major financial firms, the Department of Homeland Security, the US Treasury, and the Federal Reserve team up to see if they could to keep the market from crashing in the event of a major cyberattack, you know people are starting to get nervous.

That's precisely the scenario underway today down on Wall Street, in a large-scale coordinated cybersecurity drill called Quantum Dawn 2.

The mock attack, organized by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), is executed by a software tool that simulates a stream of security breaches. Bankers are giving snippets of "vague and confusing" information about what's going on—slow trading, viruses in the system—and must put their heads together to decide what to do, Reuters reported.

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As the afternoon progresses, the threat escalates, and the attacks become more intense. SIFMA will give the firms feedback on how they did in a few weeks.

Though I can't shake the absurd image of hundreds of bankers and government officials running around skyscrapers trying to thwart online espionage, this is something the US is taking very seriously. Cyberattack drills are a rising trend as hackers target US firms more frequently, with larger and more sophisticated attacks. The number of attacks on U.S. companies rose 42 percent last year, according to a recent Symantec report.

Not only is the financial sector an obvious target for cash-hungry criminals (a recent CNN Money article called cyberattacks the bank robberies of the future), it's a target for hacktivists protesting corporate greed. And increasingly, cyber-espionage incidents are coming from foreign state-sponsored hackers looking to uncover US state secrets; the government has started pointing fingers at the likes of China and Iran.

This isn't the first time Wall Street has bonded together to test its chops. Quantum Dawn 1, held in 2011, was similar to today's drill, but included a physical attack as well. "Armed gunmen were running around Lower Manhattan, trying to gain entry to the exchanges and really just try to blow things up,” SIFMA executive Karl Schimmeck told Reuters.

That scenario, as well as today's, even included a fictional news report on the crisis. Here's the 2011 simulated newscast. (Start at 1:20.)

Last year, the federal government's emergency management organization added cyberattacks to the list of potential catastrophic events. Earlier this week, Anonymous hacked FEMA, leaking hundreds of employee email address in retaliation for a exercise drill the organization held responding to a mock attack from a fictionalized hacker group they called "The Void."

Anonymous assumed, probably rightly, that the hacker group was based on them. Offended by the negative portrayal of the group, the hacktivists decided to show their teeth.

If a real-life Wall Street vs. hackers war comes to pass, I have to say my money's on the hackers. Good thing it's not in the stock market.