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

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

#41

Post by gus_massa »

alphapapa wrote: post #39
Razengan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Honestly, more than 50% of the downvoted comments I see on HN do not deserve to be downvoted. Less than half of them are rule-breaking, rude, useless, etc. Frankly, downvoting here has become just as bad as on Reddit: it happens because people don't like the comment for any reason, including, e.g. that what they had for lunch is giving them indigestion at the moment they lay eyes on it (but mostly it's because they s…

You can see [dead] comments if you enable the show-dead flag in your profile. Also, you can vouch a [dead] comment to revive it. (You need to have a minimal amount of karma for this.)

And if you see something egregious, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com

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

#42

Post by bfuller »

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…

It was pretty eerie walking outside past midnight to clear skies and sirens all around

but it only took about 2 minutes for me to find a tweet about what was happening

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

#43

Post by joecool1029 »

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 can almost guarantee this was just a kid messing around.

Or someone pushed the wrong button. Remember, this is the same city that threw T-Mobile under the bus a month ago saying their callers were 'ghost calling' their 911 system with a bug causing the lines to clog.

In that case, it turned out to be actual callers trying to get through and the calls weren't being answered because a quarter of the already understaffed call center called out. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas-city-hall/2017/03/20/...

So yeah, I'm not betting on hackers for this one. I'm betting on incompetence.

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

#44

Post by hsod »

pluma wrote: post #15
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 was going to joke that I'm surprised this wasn't posed as "Russian hackers set of sirens" considering that the US currently tries to pin everything on them but it seems you beat me to it -- and with Poe's law in full effect, too.

I don't know, I think Americans are right to be concerned about and sensitive to Russian cyberattacks:

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

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

#45

Post by joezydeco »

pavement wrote: post #6
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…

Growing up, the audio tone for that signal was etched into my brain over the course of numerous Saturday mornings, when I woke up early enough to hear the tests. This was before cable was normal. Sometimes it felt like the dial-tone-like noise drilled into your ears for a solid 90 seconds. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOVwgKmzROw The new sound is even worse (and seemingly longer), and I imagine it's signa…

The new sound is even worse (and seemingly longer), and I imagine it's signal (which sounds more like fax machine squelches than an alert noise)

This is the SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) header, designed to deliver more detail to receiving devices about where the event is, the type, and how severe it will be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding

This is how you can buy weather radios that only deliver emergency weather messages for your county or town as opposed to the entire listening area of the station.

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

#46

Post by jsmthrowaway »

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.

Don't worry, half the country probably doesn't know how to operate an actual EAN, nor where the book is when it comes. I have a feeling the Wikipedia page on it is going to be very busy in the first ten minutes after a president decides to pull the trigger.

This is backed up by me skimming the relevant section of the binder when I was training on a station, saying out loud "I didn't know there was a Presidential Activation of EAS," and my boss at the time replying "there is?" rather surprised.

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

#47

Post by makomk »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Don't worry, half the country probably doesn't know how to operate an actual EAN, nor where the book is when it comes. I have a feeling the Wikipedia page on it is going to be very busy in the first ten minutes after a president decides to pull the trigger. This is backed up by me skimming the relevant section of the binder when I was training on a station, saying out loud "I didn't know there was a Presidential Acti…

The nationwide tests of the EAS have apparently not gone terribly smoothly, and that was with advance notice and planning. So it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

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

#48

Post by alphapapa »

gus_massa wrote: post #41
alphapapa wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, more than 50% of the downvoted comments I see on HN do not deserve to be downvoted. Less than half of them are rule-breaking, rude, useless, etc. Frankly, downvoting here has become just as bad as on Reddit: it happens because people don't like the comment for any reason, including, e.g. that what they had for lunch is giving them indigestion at the moment they lay eyes on it (but mostly it's because they s…

You can see [dead] comments if you enable the show-dead flag in your profile. Also, you can vouch a [dead] comment to revive it. (You need to have a minimal amount of karma for this.) And if you see something egregious, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com

I've had show-dead on for a long time, and I use custom CSS [1] which even makes dead posts stand out more.

The downvote abuse here is ubiquitous. The mods don't care, I supposed because 'pg decreed long ago that downvoting for disagreement is acceptable. The finger-wagging of the invisible hand is working as intended.

That doesn't make it right.

1: https://github.com/alphapapa/solarized-everything-css/blob/m...

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

#49

Post by najajomo »

alphapapa wrote: post #39
Razengan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Honestly, more than 50% of the downvoted comments I see on HN do not deserve to be downvoted. Less than half of them are rule-breaking, rude, useless, etc. Frankly, downvoting here has become just as bad as on Reddit: it happens because people don't like the comment for any reason, including, e.g. that what they had for lunch is giving them indigestion at the moment they lay eyes on it (but mostly it's because they s…

@alphapapa: 'Honestly, more than 50% of the downvoted comments I see on HN do not deserve to be downvoted'..

They've even downvoted that comment :)

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

#50

Post by Razengan »

te_chris wrote: post #28
Razengan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So we're punishing thinking?

> conspiracy theorists ... always ready with a few tea-leaves to read.

That's how you see it. I didn't see that comment as a "conspiracy theory." It wasn't a rambling rant. I'd say you're always ready to see everyone as a conspiracy theorist if they don't parrot the default explanation.

In any case, remember that people voicing concerns about widespread government snooping were shut down and derided as "conspiracy theorists" barely 10 years ago.

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