FBI opens replica town to simulate cyberattacks

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has built the Kinetic Cyber Range, a 22,000-square-foot replica town in Huntsville, Alabama, to train law enforcement in simulating and investigating real-world cyberattacks. Opened in February 2025, the purpose-built facility features fully furnished houses, a hotel, a gas station, a grocery mart, a courthouse, a hospital, and a power company, complete with roads and traffic lights designed to mimic a real U.S. community. Each part of the town is wired with functioning devices and systems that behave as they would in a real community or business, allowing investigators to train in a secure environment while preventing simulated attacks from spilling out of the facility.

The scale of the training facility reflects the growing threat of cybercrime. According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, which drew on more than 1 million complaints, the agency logged a record $20.9 billion in U.S. cybercrime losses. This figure represents a 26% jump in cybercrime losses over the prior year. The report highlights ransomware—malicious software that encrypts data for extortion—as the top ongoing threat to critical infrastructure. The replica town allows the FBI to simulate ransomware attacks and their real-world consequences, including high-pressure decisions that could cause harm to people, such as when hospital systems go dark.

Since opening, the Kinetic Cyber Range has trained more than 1,400 students, including FBI personnel and partners from other federal and local agencies. The facility includes a data center equipped with more than 200 physical servers, some running Windows and others running Linux. 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 data center environment as realistic but uncomfortable, noting, “They’re cold, they’re cramped, they’re noisy, they’re dark, they’re miserable.”

In addition to simulating active attacks, the facility supports training in digital forensics, which is the process of extracting data from devices for a criminal investigation. Investigators use these techniques to bypass security protections on encrypted devices. The tools used for digital forensics often exploit vulnerabilities that are never disclosed to the device maker, such as Apple or Google, to defeat the protections those companies build in for their users.

Why it matters

The FBI’s investment in a physical simulation facility reflects the escalating severity of ransomware and cybercrime. It signals a shift toward more aggressive, hands-on digital forensics training for law enforcement as agencies struggle to keep pace with rising financial losses.