EXata/Cyber provides new features that enable users to analyze the impact of cyber warfare and network security. It uses a software virtual network (SVN) to digitally represent the entire network, the various protocol layers, antennas and devices. Every packet in the network, end-to-end, is represented in the system. EXata/Cyber can interoperate, at one or more protocol layers, with real radios and devices to provide hardware-in-the-loop capabilities. EXata/Cyber can also be connected to systems with real applications, which run on the SVN just like they are running on real networks. And, 3rd party software like Wireshark, snort and SNMP managers can interoperate with the SVN just like they do with real networks.

Mobile wireless networks are especially vulnerable to radio frequency (RF) jamming attacks that are often indistinguishable from phenomenon that often impact them like ‘normal’ interference, terrain and weather. Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) are also seriously affected by traditional wired network cyber security issues like eavesdropping, network probes or port scanning, and denial of service attacks.

EXata/Cyber is a toolkit for research and development, test and evaluation, and training of cyber warfare technologies. EXata/Cyber is an open platform allowing users to create and modify attacks and counter measures. Attacks can be targeted on specialized networks like wireless, wired, mobile ad-hoc (MANET) and tactical networks. Users can then analyze their impact on the network itself, applications and end-users.

What Sets EXata Apart?

EXata is new evaluation technology for new wireless technologies. EXata is a digital representation of networks – a representation so accurate that a user or component connected to the virtual network can not discern whether it’s connected to the digital representation or the real thing. EXata emulation is not a substitute for existing modeling and simulation; it is a whole new category of evaluation/development tool that does what the other products were not designed to do.

EXata is a realistic software virtual network. EXata enables you to digitally represent your entire network – devices, software, transmitters, antennas, terrain effects, atmospheric effects, and human interaction effects. You can now represent every variable that will affect the performance of your real network in an EXata Software Virtual Network.

EXata empowers you to move from months to minutes. With emulation, network and equipment tests that traditionally required months to perform all the calculations can now be performed in minutes, with real-network behavior.

EXata brings ultra-fidelity at 50 or 5,000 nodes. Competitors’ simulation programs, written with legacy sequential processing code, can only simulate a maximum of about 200 devices, and fidelity drops as you approach that number. With EXata, you get the same accurate representation of your network whether you’re testing 50 nodes or 5,000.

Components of EXata

EXata GUI EXata features an easy drag-and-drop GUI to build network topologies and advanced editors to allow finegrained design of devices and networks. Use the Device Model Editor to build custom communication devices or use pre-built devices like routers, switches, hubs, ATM, wireless access points, base stations, and mobile users. Run emulations and simulations with full control in 2D and 3D. Visualization Controls allow you to monitor Components of EXata emulation progress and control per-layer & per-event animation.

EXata Connection Manager EXata comes in two parts: the main EXata emulation engine that creates a digital replica of your target network, and the Connection Manager that runs on your operational systems. Applications use the Connection Manager to run their network traffic over the EXata network. Most importantly, Connection Manager makes EXata’s advanced emulation technology easy and simple to use. Applications need no modification or customization to use the realistic emulated network in EXata.

Network Security Library The Network Security Library is a toolkit with models that encrypt, authenticate, manage key distribution and certificates, create wormhole attacks, route securely, and mimic adversaries. A number of models have been created from the latest research in network security. The library can be extended to develop new attacks, network intrusions and counter measures. For more information see the Network Security Library datasheet.

Cyber Warfare Features EXata/Cyber includes features that allow users to dynamically launch cyber warfare features on the software virtual network (SVN) in EXata. Features include eavesdropping, radio jamming attacks, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and a variety of attacks detectable with 3rd party network intrusion detection software (NIDS) like snort.