FBI unveils replica town for cyberattack simulation training

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened the Kinetic Cyber Range, a 22,000-square-foot replica town situated on its campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Designed to simulate real-world cyberattacks, the facility provides law enforcement with a secure environment to investigate incidents involving ransomware and digital forensics. The range opened in February 2025 and has since trained more than 1,400 students, including FBI personnel and partners from other federal and local agencies.

The facility features fully furnished structures including houses, a hotel, a gas station, a grocery mart, a courthouse, a hospital, and a power company. These buildings are wired with functioning devices and systems that mimic the behaviour of a real community or business. Roads and traffic lights are included to complete the simulation, while safeguards ensure that any simulated attacks remain contained within the facility and do not spill out into the wider network.

A central component of the range is a data centre housing more than 200 physical servers running both Windows and Linux operating systems. This setup reflects the corporate environments investigators are likely to encounter when responding to a breach or executing a search warrant. Dave Beachboard, the range’s program manager, described the server room conditions as cold, cramped, noisy, dark, and miserable, noting that this accurately replicates the environment of real-world server rooms.

The training focuses on high-pressure decision-making scenarios, particularly those involving ransomware attacks that could cause physical harm. For example, the range allows investigators to simulate hospital systems going dark, forcing them to make critical decisions in a controlled setting. The facility also supports training in digital forensics, specifically regarding the extraction of data from encrypted modern devices, a process that often involves exploiting vulnerabilities not disclosed to manufacturers such as Apple or Google.

The initiative comes against a backdrop of escalating cybercrime. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, based on more than one million complaints, recorded a record $20.9 billion in U.S. cybercrime losses, representing a 26 per cent increase from the prior year. Ransomware was identified as the top ongoing threat to critical infrastructure in the report. The Kinetic Cyber Range aims to move beyond classroom theory, providing hands-on experience with the latest consumer and enterprise technologies frequently targeted by malicious hackers.