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Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

arstechnica.com

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Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#21

Post by jacquesm »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #14
yellowbkpk wrote: post #4

When I helped run a college radio station as a student, one if the things I had to check on was the Emergency Alert System (EAS). It's the system that cuts into your broadcast and allows emergency personnel to transmit information over TV and radio. Maybe it was specific to our setup, but our station was assigned two other stations to listen to for EAS alert tones. If the box heard the tones it would flip a relay and…

Most stations have that device configured to only automatically take over air for the most egregious emergencies, with the rest aired on a discretionary basis. You generally only see full auto relays with full auto stations; pretty much every station with a butt in the big seat is wired discretionary, with individual station policy regarding which alerts to rebroadcast. I wouldn't generally retransmit a severe thunde…

> To my knowledge, only a Presidential Activation of EAS bypasses everything, and by law there's a book next to every eligible transmitter that describes the procedure for that (it's a bit unique).

Let's not give anybody ideas here, twitter is bad enough.

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#22

Post by Razengan »

cyanotic wrote: post #12
ivyirwin wrote: post #7

I was in Dallas when this happened. I can attest to the eeriness of sirens going off all over town with no idea what they mean. In Texas we're accustomed to tornado sirens, but when the skies are clear and they are going off, makes you wonder what might be happening - especially when it lasts for over an hour. But what really struck me was how much we expect instant information these days. Took over 30 minutes to fig…

Part of me suspects that there might be something in this related to current events. If I were to spitball ideas about motives and modus operandi, it feels like the kind of thing a state actor would tamper with, and in terms of style I'd gravitate toward looking in North Korea's direction, since it feels like their style. Why do it? Raising noise with false alarms, desensitizes the intended signal of an alarm, ruinin…

The above comment is a ghostly gray right now. Why? cyanotic is merely stating a conjecture out loud. There's nothing rude in the comment, it's not attacking your favorite company/paradigm/X and he even concedes to the "default"/"correct" opinion at the end.

Why downvote that? Are we Reddit now?

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#24

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

csours wrote: post #9

> At its peak, the call volume and a short-staffed call center pushed wait times as high as six minutes—the city's goal is to answer most 911 calls within 10 seconds. This is why we can't have nice hacks.

911 systems (alas) get overwhelmed all the time in large cities (for various reasons).

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#25

Post by bdavisx »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #18
cyanotic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me suspects that there might be something in this related to current events. If I were to spitball ideas about motives and modus operandi, it feels like the kind of thing a state actor would tamper with, and in terms of style I'd gravitate toward looking in North Korea's direction, since it feels like their style. Why do it? Raising noise with false alarms, desensitizes the intended signal of an alarm, ruinin…

I can almost guarantee this was just a kid messing around. There's no real motive for anyone else.

I'm not saying that I agree that it was a foreign power that did this, but there are motives. If you can turn the sirens on and keep them on for a while, you can probably turn them off and keep them off for a while. That could be bad in a situation where they really, really needed to be turned on.

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#26

Post by imglorp »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #24
csours wrote: post #9

> At its peak, the call volume and a short-staffed call center pushed wait times as high as six minutes—the city's goal is to answer most 911 calls within 10 seconds. This is why we can't have nice hacks.

911 systems (alas) get overwhelmed all the time in large cities (for various reasons).

This was intentional, and it was harmful.

How many people that actually needed help during this time could not get any? It seems Dallas 911 is already killing people when the system is overwhelmed on good days:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/1...

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#27

Post by adolph »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #10

My first inclination is to say "good". My thought is that maybe incidents like this will get governments (actually everyone) to take security more seriously. But, realistically, I'm forced to change to "bad". What I know will happen is there will be a bunch of hand wringing, minor panic, etc. Followed by a request for money. Lots of money. Lots and lots of money. That money will go to cronies at companies that specia…

There may be some things that require relatively low security within a high trust environment. For example, fire extinguishers behind glass in a building.

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#28

Post by te_chris »

Razengan wrote: post #22
cyanotic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me suspects that there might be something in this related to current events. If I were to spitball ideas about motives and modus operandi, it feels like the kind of thing a state actor would tamper with, and in terms of style I'd gravitate toward looking in North Korea's direction, since it feels like their style. Why do it? Raising noise with false alarms, desensitizes the intended signal of an alarm, ruinin…

The above comment is a ghostly gray right now. Why? cyanotic is merely stating a conjecture out loud. There's nothing rude in the comment, it's not attacking your favorite company/paradigm/X and he even concedes to the "default"/"correct" opinion at the end. Why downvote that? Are we Reddit now?

No, hence the downvotes. His comments belong among the conspiracy theorists over at reddit, always ready with a few tea-leaves to read.

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#29

Post by dom0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most stations have that device configured to only automatically take over air for the most egregious emergencies, with the rest aired on a discretionary basis. You generally only see full auto relays with full auto stations; pretty much every station with a butt in the big seat is wired discretionary, with individual station policy regarding which alerts to rebroadcast. I wouldn't generally retransmit a severe thunde…

> To my knowledge, only a Presidential Activation of EAS bypasses everything, and by law there's a book next to every eligible transmitter that describes the procedure for that (it's a bit unique). Let's not give anybody ideas here, twitter is bad enough.

Volksempfänger would be damn classy propaganda. But Trump is not classy, never was, and never will be.

Re: Hackers set off Dallas’ 156 emergency sirens over a dozen times

#30

Post by akira2501 »

tallanvor wrote: post #16
yellowbkpk wrote: post #4

When I helped run a college radio station as a student, one if the things I had to check on was the Emergency Alert System (EAS). It's the system that cuts into your broadcast and allows emergency personnel to transmit information over TV and radio. Maybe it was specific to our setup, but our station was assigned two other stations to listen to for EAS alert tones. If the box heard the tones it would flip a relay and…

Well, the small stations who don't have a person decided when to play the alerts are typically listening to two larger stations, and it varies which ones they are listening to. So yes, a malicious actor could conceivably do this, but he/she would have to be close enough the antennas and have a transmitter powerful enough to broadcast over the assigned signals. As others have noted, larger stations generally always ha…

> larger stations generally always have at least one person present who can verify alerts before rebroadcasting them.

New rules recently in effect, presidential alert messages (PAM) are to be rebroadcast by station equipment immediately with minimal delay and without requiring operator intervention.

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