UK Police Reveals Arrest of Hackers’ Spokesman
British police officials revealed on Wednesday the arrest of an 18-yea-old teenager that authorities tagged as the mouthpiece of a hacking group identified as responsible for breaching the security protocols of Sony Pictures and a host of other websites. REUTERS

The United States is reportedly building its own "scale model" of the internet to practice various scenarios in the new cyber battlefield.

The scale model will reportedly allow researchers to simulate various scenarios including cyber attacks from hacker collectives and foreign powers.

The system is being designed to function as a testing ground for various defensive and offensive technologies to aid the country in all future cyber conflicts.

The model will apparently work as a controllable mini-internet that will allow researchers to carry-out experiments without damaging the country's real network. The system will also be able to be wiped or reset after each test.

It has been reported that the system's development will be fund by the $500 million the Department of Defense has recently been allocated for the creation of new "cyber technologies".

The project is currently being overseen by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency.

The actual creation of the model will be done by several different organisations. These will include Johns Hopkins University and Lockheed Martin.

The announcement of the model internet's creation comes just after the U.S. Senate and CIA suffered attacks from the hacker collective LulzSec.

Already analysts have dubbed the announcement as the next step in the U.S.'s ongoing upgrade to its network security.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon revealed a planned proposal that would amend the country's current policy to cyber threats, making it categorise cyber attacks as acts of war.

There is currently no given date as to when the model internet will be fully functional.

China