The FBI Built a Secret City to Simulate Devastating Cyberattacks

The FBI has for the first time revealed details about the Kinetic Cyber Range, a facility built on the agency's campus in Huntsville, Alabama, designed to train investigators and law enforcement to face increasingly complex and realistic cyberattack scenarios.

The installation, covering over 2,000 square meters, was inaugurated in February 2025 and replicates a true American community on a smaller scale. Inside, there are fully furnished homes, a hotel, a gas station with a convenience store, a courthouse, a hospital, and even an electric company, all connected by functioning roads and traffic lights.

The goal is to provide investigators with a practical environment in which to practice beyond traditional theoretical training. Each building is equipped with real functioning devices and operating systems, configured to behave like those in businesses, public infrastructures, and private residences. At the same time, the entire platform is isolated so that simulated attacks cannot spread externally.

Since the facility's opening, over 1,400 individuals, including FBI agents and representatives from other federal and local agencies, have already participated in training activities. The project arises in response to a threat that continues to grow: according to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, economic losses attributed to cybercrime in the United States have reached a record $20.9 billion, a 26% increase from the previous year. Ransomware also remains the primary threat to critical infrastructures.

One of the distinctive features of the Kinetic Cyber Range is the capability to simulate not only the cyberattack itself but also the operational consequences that ensue. Agents can, for example, face scenarios where ransomware compromises a hospital's systems, forcing decision-makers to make urgent choices that directly impact patient safety. The focus thus shifts from the purely technical aspect to the concrete effects that an incident can generate on the population and essential services.

The facility also includes a data center with over 200 physical servers, some running Windows and others running Linux, designed to replicate the IT environments that investigators encounter during incident response activities or when executing search warrants. The intent is to familiarize staff with operating conditions as close to reality as possible.

The center is also used for training in digital forensics, a discipline that allows the recovery of data from encrypted devices and supports judicial investigations. This is an area often at the center of debate, as some tools used by investigators leverage vulnerabilities not disclosed to manufacturers of devices and operating systems, circumventing the protections implemented by companies like Apple and Google.

According to the FBI, the value of the simulated city lies primarily in the ability to understand the cascading effects generated by a cyberattack. A compromise affecting an electric company can have immediate repercussions on the hospital or courthouse in the same area, while a ransom demand can create operational pressures that involve multiple parties simultaneously.