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Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

cnn.com

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Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#121

"The message sent was of the ‘Extreme Alert’ type and contained the word ‘misanthropy’ – which means hatred towards humanity. It is probably a hacker attack,” the agency’s statement said." As this happens whenever there is an intrusion reported in the press, the word "hacker" is often misused: "There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males)…

Surely you're not quoting Eric Raymond with a straight face?

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#122
post #75

Disabling alerts is the second thing I do to a new handset (after rooting) - including Presidential alerts. The Amber alerts I got were often hundreds of miles away. But even if they were closer - say only 25 mi away, I'm still not going to be any help. Weather alerts weren't much better. Having my device sound the klaxons over Red Flag warnings conditioned me to ignore all alerts.

> Disabling alerts is the second thing I do to a new handset Except you can't in Canada. The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory. The option to disable alerts in not present in settings menu (at least on iPhones). You can disable alerts in Brazil. So in one sense, Brazil is more free than Canada.

Shortly before COVID there was a string of amber alerts arriving in the wee hours of the morning in Ontario regarding missing children. Didn't matter where in the province (larger than many European countries) it happened the alerts would to out regardless. A mix of people complaining about it and social media about why you're a bad person if you don't welcome these alerts. But inevitably they went away by and large. Not aware of any stated policy change I just suspect that they have become more conservative about sending them out because it was frankly ridiculous. Rousing millions of people from bed with any regularity over things they absolutely do nothing about would have only snowballed into a demand that it stop, even with the social media engine shaming people

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not a technical problem. I agree. It's a lack of technical proficiency on the part of the world's government's problem, which is another way of saying it's a political problem. > And the problem is that it’s not centralized. It is, though. The implementation might not be uniform but the architecture is inherently centralized. Subscribers do not get to pick and choose sources, that is decided by the network ope…

What emergency alerts would BigCo push to people on its campus? There would be no consent btw, they'd just fire anyone who didn't enable the alerts.

Active shooter, chemical spill, any kind of building emergency like water stoppages.

And then if it wasn’t tightly controlled and carefully managed, probably things like social events with free snacks, company all hands announcements, and single cars blocking someone into a parking spot.

I see the usefulness of more fine-grained subscription, but also see the abuse potential from giving more people access.

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's another instance of: give a politician a fish and watch him smear it on the walls to stink up the place, throw it in the garbage and then complain he's still hungry.

What happens when you teach him to fish :-(

You can't, they're incapable of learning.

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#125
There's a video [1] from the "hacker" sending the message. The hacker allegedly [2] stole the VPN credentials (of an employee and two colleagues, because they were doing credentials sharing apparently) from a personal computer ("RGB gaming PC") running Windows 7 (EOL), w/o antivirus and reportedly having search for Windows activators for Windows 10 and Office 2019. Cherry on top: the malware seems to have dropped via a malicious game install. Lol

Ironically he recorded the video with CapCut, showing his ID, which also revealed their profile picture and identity [2]...

If all of this is true, we're lucky they "only" paged the whole country instead of doing something even more harmful. This is some crazy level of incompetence / lack of security.

[1]: https://x.com/i/status/2068482069643071749

[2]: https://x.com/i/status/2068633434591830290

[3]: https://x.com/i/status/2068488298998231117

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#126
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ When we ask for any member of the Brandt family, every phone in South America rings.” That sounds like the computer had a bad solution to “find a Brandt.” The comment with the request to find this reference had me thinking it would be a single phone number misconfigured to call a large population.

It actually had nothing to do with a computer! It was the luck of either Teela Brown, or Mr. Brandt depending on how you read the genetic trait of luck. If you haven't read ringworld, you should. It's really quite good. But stop before you get to ringworld's children or whatever it's called. Niven's furry fetish is in full force later in the series.

Yeah, he was less focused on the specifics earlier. 51 mentions of "rishathra" in the Ringworld Engineers.

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#127

There's a video [1] from the "hacker" sending the message. The hacker allegedly [2] stole the VPN credentials (of an employee and two colleagues, because they were doing credentials sharing apparently) from a personal computer ("RGB gaming PC") running Windows 7 (EOL), w/o antivirus and reportedly having search for Windows activators for Windows 10 and Office 2019. Cherry on top: the malware seems to have dropped via…

It also looks like they've used leaked old credentials that weren't updated in years: https://x.com/i/status/2068635848786972863

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a message, but a date. There's this huge national exam called ENEM that is like SAT that every Brazilian in age to enter a college takes. Millions of students are taking it every year at the same date and time, as its result is what determines who enters in the best universities. Obviously, security against cheating is a huge concern and so everyone must have their phones turned off and sealed in a bag that stays…

If they’re turned off presumably the alarm wouldn’t go off

I read this as the implication being that at least some people’s phones would still be on them, and it would suddenly be very obvious.

Which incidentally, how do you enforce a rule like this without serious security like pat downs or metal detectors? Because otherwise you could easily sneak a phone in through the sophisticated hack of owning two phones…

Re: Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

#129
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disabling alerts is the second thing I do to a new handset Except you can't in Canada. The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory. The option to disable alerts in not present in settings menu (at least on iPhones). You can disable alerts in Brazil. So in one sense, Brazil is more free than Canada.

> The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory. The option to disable alerts in not present in settings menu (at least on iPhones). I'm Canadian too, and I'm able to toggle all the options off on my Android phone, it just does absolutely nothing and all the alerts still come through.

so, the option to disable alerts is not present in the settings menu, despite appearances
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