During the game, more than 100 public and private agencies, associations and corporations participated in the game from some 60 locations and five countries including Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

The project involved nine major IT firms, six electricity utility firms (generation transmission and grid operations) and two major airline carriers.

According to Homeland Security documents, Australia and New Zealand were involved in a response-and-recovery arm on the second last day of the war games.

The exercise involved a mythical collective known as the Worldwide Anti-Globalization Alliance (WAGA) which, through a radical arm named the Black Hood Society probed SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) control systems and military networks, turning the heat off in government buildings and taking down railways.

Acting independently of WAGA during the event was a group of rogue "independent actors" who launched malicious code in the form of worms and viruses. This was in addition to a group of German hackers intent on clogging bandwidth as well as a disgruntled airport employee attempting to disrupt a communications tower and interfere with cargo.