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

Twice the normal volume of 911 calls came into the system early Saturday morning.

Read the whole story

 

[l27]

And if you don't own a smartphone, or don't understand how to use one properly? A siren is a cheap simple solution that crosses income divisions and is easily understood by everyone.

If you don't own a smartphone or don't understand how to use one in 2017 you have other problems.

There are blind people, elderly people, and children out there, too. Looks like you are the one who has problems imaging what other people may be like.

Aloe see previous posts - not everyone can access their phones 24/7 due to many circumstances.

(nudge, nudge) "Hey Grandma, we've got to evacuate." A blind person isn't going to know what to do when they hear a siren, either. In fact nobody will, it conveys no information besides "unspecified emergency" by means of inciting panic.

Self-centered much?

Go live somewhere in tornado alley and then tell us how nobody knows what the siren means.

You don't evacuate from a tornado. You take cover. I'm sure that group of people you labeled know how to take cover. It's no different than living or working close to a chemical plant. The siren would go off at noon every day.

 

[Digital Dud]

They should reveal how it was compromised because what if other cities have the same flaw in their systems? I doubt it's some bespoke system developed just for Dallas.

 

[Soothsayer786]

Messing with emergency systems or other critical infrastructure is way over the line. It's not a prank. The kind of distress and potential for death or injury that could cause is not far from domestic terrorism in my mind.

I wouldn't want to be whoever did this. The feds are going to be all over this. Which is great, but it would be even better if we had more effective cyber security on a local and federal level to stop this kind of thing in the first place.

 

[SixDegrees]

And if you don't own a smartphone, or don't understand how to use one properly? A siren is a cheap simple solution that crosses income divisions and is easily understood by everyone.

If you don't own a smartphone or don't understand how to use one in 2017 you have other problems.

There are blind people, elderly people, and children out there, too. Looks like you are the one who has problems imaging what other people may be like.

Aloe see previous posts - not everyone can access their phones 24/7 due to many circumstances.

(nudge, nudge) "Hey Grandma, we've got to evacuate." A blind person isn't going to know what to do when they hear a siren, either. In fact nobody will, it conveys no information besides "unspecified emergency" by means of inciting panic.

Self-centered much?

Go live somewhere in tornado alley and then tell us how nobody knows what the siren means.

I said nobody knows WHAT TO DO. Which direction is the weather coming from; to where should I evacuate; when is the estimated time of arrival and magnitude?

All of that is conveyed instantly in a SMS text, which could provide links to radar images where "a picture is worth a thousand words" (the blind person will receive no more information through either medium except perhaps a recorded section of audio), whereas none of it is conveyed in a "droning loud noise".

It may astonish you to learn that not everyone has a cell phone welded to their hand and gaze.

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

 

[ScruffyKiwi]

What crap. The ham radio idiots say the same thing, but I've seen zero evidence of modern wireless systems getting "overloaded" in a storm. This seems to only be quoted in the hypothetical. I have never seen a wireless carrier outage in a modern city.

The cell networks don't get "overloaded by the storm", they get overloaded by all the people suddenly calling their relatives to see if they are ok, massively overloading the network. This happened in the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake in 2011, leading to emergency services telling everyone to stop calling so that the networks wouldn't be congested.

You DO NOT want your cell network to be your primary emergency warning system. There is nothing wrong with it being used as well (we have flood alerts txted to us where I live) but in an emergency the cell network is the first thing to fall over.

 

[Soothsayer786]

Messing with emergency systems or other critical infrastructure is way over the line. It's not a prank. The kind of distress and potential for death or injury that could cause is not far from domestic terrorism in my mind.

I wouldn't want to be whoever did this. The feds are going to be all over this. Which is great, but it would be even better if we had more effective cyber security on a local and federal level to stop this kind of thing in the first place.

Compromises like this are obviously needed to keep system maintainers and providers on their toes; this "hack" served as a warning and call to attention that the system has issues. Exhibit A: the discussion we are having here. The "hackers" called to attention a vulnerability, and therefore provided net positive. From what I understand, nobody was hurt, and new knowledge was gained.

And they will not find whoever did it because the system is too old to provide such metadata or evidence.

Try to find out who flipped off the bathroom light switch last Friday at your workplace; good luck.

Was that sarcasm, or are you just trolling, or even worse, are you being serious? I'm really not sure which it is.

I mean if they wanted to help out they would have alerted the authorities to the vulnerability. You are trying to convince me that they were doing a public service by blasting an emergency siren at midnight and blowing up the 911 system to the point where people who really needed help may not have been able to get it?

There are just so many things wrong with what you said that I'd like to assume it was sarcasm.

 

[truthyboy15]

Pretty good chance somebody didn't change the factory default password, I'd guess.

nah just try the idiots put the system on the internet where anyone could get to it.

 

[loquacio]

And if you don't own a smartphone, or don't understand how to use one properly? A siren is a cheap simple solution that crosses income divisions and is easily understood by everyone.

If you don't own a smartphone or don't understand how to use one in 2017 you have other problems.

There are blind people, elderly people, and children out there, too. Looks like you are the one who has problems imaging what other people may be like.

Aloe see previous posts - not everyone can access their phones 24/7 due to many circumstances.

(nudge, nudge) "Hey Grandma, we've got to evacuate." A blind person isn't going to know what to do when they hear a siren, either. In fact nobody will, it conveys no information besides "unspecified emergency" by means of inciting panic.

Self-centered much?

Go live somewhere in tornado alley and then tell us how nobody knows what the siren means.

I said nobody knows WHAT TO DO. Which direction is the weather coming from; to where should I evacuate; when is the estimated time of arrival and magnitude?

All of that is conveyed instantly in a SMS text, which could provide links to radar images where "a picture is worth a thousand words" (the blind person will receive no more information through either medium except perhaps a recorded section of audio), whereas none of it is conveyed in a "droning loud noise".

It's coming from the west, you evacuate to the nearest basement, and you're a fucking idiot.

 

[Congobongo]

What crap. The ham radio idiots say the same thing, but I've seen zero evidence of modern wireless systems getting "overloaded" in a storm. This seems to only be quoted in the hypothetical. I have never seen a wireless carrier outage in a modern city.

The cell networks don't get "overloaded by the storm", they get overloaded by all the people suddenly calling their relatives to see if they are ok, massively overloading the network. This happened in the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake in 2011, leading to emergency services telling everyone to stop calling so that the networks wouldn't be congested.

You DO NOT want your cell network to be your primary emergency warning system. There is nothing wrong with it being used as well (we have flood alerts txted to us where I live) but in an emergency the cell network is the first thing to fall over.

This is 100% Truth. During the tornado and hail storm in April of last year in N Texas our cell phones were peaty much worthless for about a week after the storm passed. As all the local cell towers ended up damaged no one could call in our out. Good old landlines were still working though.

 

[Arlondiluthel]

Can someone who lives there explain why Dallas has over 150 emergency sirens in the first place? Are these leftovers from the cold war, a flood warning system, or what?

This is what I want to know. Surely an SMS or social media based alert system would be far more fitting in 2017. Perhaps the answer to this is to get rid of some antiques and move on to something more modern and useful.

An API (think IFTTT) could be provided and a few blinks of your kitchen light and a message on your phone could get across much more information quickly than a blaring siren.

This also makes me wonder why 911 is still bound by ancient voice telephone technology. This stuff really needs to be scuttled for Internet, smartphone and social media based systems.

As far as the "hackers" go, if you can call them that, all they did was provide a service to the community reminding them that their warning system was old, insecure, and outmoded. Maybe this will catalyze Dallas to move on to something new and modern.

Even though it is 2017, there are still a lot of people who live in "Tornado Alley" who can't afford/access high-speed internet, and can't afford, or don't care to use, a smartphone. Whether it be because they're barely getting by, or because they're an older person who doesn't care for anything more advanced than a transistor radio. Additionally, it's a lot less resource-intensive, and more effective to notify everyone in the area, to sound an alarm that can be heard over great distances than to flood out individual notifications, especially in a place like Dallas where there's probably a significant number of people who don't live in the area and are just visiting.

 

[SixDegrees]

It may astonish you to learn that not everyone has a cell phone welded to their hand and gaze.

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

But nearly everyone has them in their pocket. The fact that the system is from "quite some time ago" is my point exactly, they serve no purpose but edge cases in the modern environment, and their cost has far outlived their benefit.

Not everyone has a cell phone; not everyone who has a cell phone carries it at all times; not everyone who carries one at all times stares at it constantly and slavishly.

Important systems like EAS are multiply redundant. Tornadoes, in particular, are astonishingly efficient at destroying cell service over broad areas.

 

[hestermofet]

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

Forget it. Speedr is utterly clueless. If he knew what he was talking about, he'd already know about Wireless Emergency Alerts, which is exactly what he is describing. I get them all the time for Amber Alerts. And just like any other unsolicited cell phone notification, most people ignore them. Sirens are a good second layer for when cell phones don't work.

 

[SixDegrees]

What crap. The ham radio idiots say the same thing, but I've seen zero evidence of modern wireless systems getting "overloaded" in a storm. This seems to only be quoted in the hypothetical. I have never seen a wireless carrier outage in a modern city.

The cell networks don't get "overloaded by the storm", they get overloaded by all the people suddenly calling their relatives to see if they are ok, massively overloading the network. This happened in the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake in 2011, leading to emergency services telling everyone to stop calling so that the networks wouldn't be congested.

You DO NOT want your cell network to be your primary emergency warning system. There is nothing wrong with it being used as well (we have flood alerts txted to us where I live) but in an emergency the cell network is the first thing to fall over.

This is 100% Truth. During the tornado and hail storm in April of last year in N Texas our cell phones were peaty much worthless for about a week after the storm passed. As all the local cell towers ended up damaged no one could call in our out. Good old landlines were still working though.

...And who has a Landline anymore???

In the US, about 40% of households.

 

[SixDegrees]

It may astonish you to learn that not everyone has a cell phone welded to their hand and gaze.

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

But nearly everyone has them in their pocket. The fact that the system is from "quite some time ago" is my point exactly, they serve no purpose but edge cases in the modern environment, and their cost has far outlived their benefit.

Not everyone has a cell phone; not everyone who has a cell phone carries it at all times; not everyone who carries one at all times stares at it constantly and slavishly.

Important systems like EAS are multiply redundant. Tornadoes, in particular, are astonishingly efficient at destroying cell service over broad areas.

And as I said, a tornado will take out speakers on poles as readily as it will wireless towers. Same goes for landline wooden poles and EAS broadcast towers. Tornadoes do not care; but data and wireless can alert people BEFORE the storm with much more information than a wailing sound can.

Not around here, they won't.

I suggest you go take an actual look at one of these towers. You're only making yourself look more of a fool here.

The point is to have multiple warning channels. Only short-sighted fools insist that one, and only one, is all that's needed.

 

[Arlondiluthel]

And if you don't own a smartphone, or don't understand how to use one properly? A siren is a cheap simple solution that crosses income divisions and is easily understood by everyone.

If you don't own a smartphone or don't understand how to use one in 2017 you have other problems.

There are blind people, elderly people, and children out there, too. Looks like you are the one who has problems imaging what other people may be like.

Aloe see previous posts - not everyone can access their phones 24/7 due to many circumstances.

(nudge, nudge) "Hey Grandma, we've got to evacuate." A blind person isn't going to know what to do when they hear a siren, either. In fact nobody will, it conveys no information besides "unspecified emergency" by means of inciting panic.

Self-centered much?

Go live somewhere in tornado alley and then tell us how nobody knows what the siren means.

I said nobody knows WHAT TO DO. Which direction is the weather coming from; to where should I evacuate; when is the estimated time of arrival and magnitude?

All of that is conveyed instantly in a SMS text, which could provide links to radar images where "a picture is worth a thousand words" (the blind person will receive no more information through either medium except perhaps a recorded section of audio), whereas none of it is conveyed in a "droning loud noise".

You don't evacuate during a tornado, you find a place on the lowest level of the structure you're in, preferably underground, with no windows, get as low to the ground as possible, and wait it out. Trying to evacuate just means that if you do get hit, you'll be out in the open. And with a strong enough tornado, that means being trapped in your car as it's thrown around like a Matchbox Car during a two-year old's tantrum.

The "droning loud noise" literally means, take shelter, and don't come out until the droning stops. An audio recording gets incredibly difficult to hear clearly if you're more than about 1000 ft from the speaker, and at about 1/4 mile, it sounds like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoon.

 

[SixDegrees]

What crap. The ham radio idiots say the same thing, but I've seen zero evidence of modern wireless systems getting "overloaded" in a storm. This seems to only be quoted in the hypothetical. I have never seen a wireless carrier outage in a modern city.

The cell networks don't get "overloaded by the storm", they get overloaded by all the people suddenly calling their relatives to see if they are ok, massively overloading the network. This happened in the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake in 2011, leading to emergency services telling everyone to stop calling so that the networks wouldn't be congested.

You DO NOT want your cell network to be your primary emergency warning system. There is nothing wrong with it being used as well (we have flood alerts txted to us where I live) but in an emergency the cell network is the first thing to fall over.

This is 100% Truth. During the tornado and hail storm in April of last year in N Texas our cell phones were peaty much worthless for about a week after the storm passed. As all the local cell towers ended up damaged no one could call in our out. Good old landlines were still working though.

...And who has a Landline anymore???

In the US, about 40% of households.

In five years I would be surprised if that number exceeded twenty percent.

Which is still quite a lot more than your implication that hardly anyone has one.

 

[Justin Credible]

It may astonish you to learn that not everyone has a cell phone welded to their hand and gaze.

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

But nearly everyone has them in their pocket. The fact that the system is from "quite some time ago" is my point exactly, they serve no purpose but edge cases in the modern environment, and their cost has far outlived their benefit.

You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you.

 

[SixDegrees]

It may astonish you to learn that not everyone has a cell phone welded to their hand and gaze.

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

But nearly everyone has them in their pocket. The fact that the system is from "quite some time ago" is my point exactly, they serve no purpose but edge cases in the modern environment, and their cost has far outlived their benefit.

Not everyone has a cell phone; not everyone who has a cell phone carries it at all times; not everyone who carries one at all times stares at it constantly and slavishly.

Important systems like EAS are multiply redundant. Tornadoes, in particular, are astonishingly efficient at destroying cell service over broad areas.

data and wireless can alert people BEFORE the storm with much more information than a wailing sound can.

I guess you've never heard of the EBS, either.

Seriously, dude - you need to get out more. The world inside your head is much, much smaller than the real one.

 

[hestermofet]

I bet Speedr already received a Wireless Emergency Alert and not knowing what it was, dismissed it. A siren is an unmistakable warning that something is wrong.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireles ... ncy_Alerts

 

[Congobongo]

What crap. The ham radio idiots say the same thing, but I've seen zero evidence of modern wireless systems getting "overloaded" in a storm. This seems to only be quoted in the hypothetical. I have never seen a wireless carrier outage in a modern city.

The cell networks don't get "overloaded by the storm", they get overloaded by all the people suddenly calling their relatives to see if they are ok, massively overloading the network. This happened in the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake in 2011, leading to emergency services telling everyone to stop calling so that the networks wouldn't be congested.

You DO NOT want your cell network to be your primary emergency warning system. There is nothing wrong with it being used as well (we have flood alerts txted to us where I live) but in an emergency the cell network is the first thing to fall over.

This is 100% Truth. During the tornado and hail storm in April of last year in N Texas our cell phones were peaty much worthless for about a week after the storm passed. As all the local cell towers ended up damaged no one could call in our out. Good old landlines were still working though.

...And who has a Landline anymore??? FAR more people have smartphones. Perhaps "not everyone", but FAR more, do. Bolster the wireless systems and add capacity - I am all for that. But clinging to old technology is dangerous, and holds us back.

In your part the country that may be the case. But down here in the south most of us still have a landline due to weather related emergency issues that happen more often than not. Its time tested and proven to be reliable. A twister is going to take down overhead lines and poles but it ain't going to do shit to a burred landline.

 

[SixDegrees]

This is 100% Truth. During the tornado and hail storm in April of last year in N Texas our cell phones were peaty much worthless for about a week after the storm passed. As all the local cell towers ended up damaged no one could call in our out. Good old landlines were still working though.

...And who has a Landline anymore???

In the US, about 40% of households.

In five years I would be surprised if that number exceeded twenty percent.

Which is still quite a lot more than your implication that hardly anyone has one.

But that's just old people and the technologically backwards. They don't need communications or storm warnings. They're just holding us back.

So, around here the marking '/s' is commonly used to indicate sarcasm. Also, Poe's Law is very often in effect, so it may be worthwhile to use it if there's any chance of confusion.

 

[Salacyous]

Q: "What kind of vulnerabilities do we have?"
A: It's connected to the Internet.

 

[CraigJ ✅]

As usual with this kind of crime : find the culprits, put them in prison 10 years.

No, just calculate the cost of the additional calls (every call center calculates the average cost per call), make them pay that, confiscate all computers for 5 years, 200+ hours of community service.

Or give them jobs at the NSA or CIA...

 

[SixDegrees]

Q: "What kind of vulnerabilities do we have?"
A: It's connected to the Internet.

Maybe, but I'll reserve judgment until that's shown to be the problem here.

 

[Salacyous]

Q: "What kind of vulnerabilities do we have?"
A: It's connected to the Internet.

Maybe, but I'll reserve judgment until that's shown to be the problem here.

When dealing with Government services, the simplest answer is normally the correct one.

 

[SixDegrees]

Q: "What kind of vulnerabilities do we have?"
A: It's connected to the Internet.

Maybe, but I'll reserve judgment until that's shown to be the problem here.

When dealing with Government services, the simplest answer is normally the correct one.

Well, you would think that. But then, it would be dirt simple to expand the Medicare system to cover the entire populace, while Congress decided it would be really neat to implement a bizarre, byzantine system designed by the insurance industry to ensure the industry's profit margins soared.

But we'll see. I can't begrudge authorities some time to fix the problem and alert others using the same system before going public with the cause, though.

 

[veldrin]

There are two issues here, both related. Whoever operates the emergency sirens are a group of morons for having them connected in a way that hackers could even breach the thing in the first place. There is zero reason to have them accessible to the Internet, even indirectly. They should be on their own separate and secure internal network. And even if there is some excellent reason for that I'm not thinking of, there should be no need to disable the entire system to disconnect it from whatever insecure network the attackers were using.

Secondly, many members of the public are also apparently morons. 911 is not a goddamned information line. A siren sounding is not something that requires emergency services to be dispatched to your location, thus a call to 911 was totally inappropriate. If local media and/or the jurisdiction's website lacked the information the callers felt they needed, they should have been calling a non-emergency number at the absolute most.

If Dallas lacks a 311 call center, that's another layer of stupidity on top, and if they do, that is probably the number people should have been calling, not 911. (Unless the sirens literally gave someone a heart attack, anyway)

Why is it so difficult for people to understand what the appropriate use of 911 is?

 

[Causality]

We need to get to the bottom of it—what kind of vulnerabilities do we have?"

Almost certainly dozens of them. From military cyberwarfare to the federal government to state governments, we in this country have an obsession with choosing offense over defense. We'll spend ten million dollars on redlight cameras and then never apply security patches to them. We'll spend fifty million dollars and two years of work from a dedicated team to figure out where Russia moved a squad of ground to air missiles, meanwhile China has made off with complete files on the F-35 multiple times during its development.

This attitude is completely ass-backward.

 

[l27]

You also seem utterly unaware that the sirens were incorporated into the Emergency Alert System quite some time ago, and are only a single facet of that system. Maybe you should pull your head out of your phone once in a while and try learning before spouting.

Forget it. Speedr is utterly clueless. If he knew what he was talking about, he'd already know about Wireless Emergency Alerts, which is exactly what he is describing. I get them all the time for Amber Alerts. And just like any other unsolicited cell phone notification, most people ignore them. Sirens are a good second layer for when cell phones don't work.

Yep, that's one of the first things I turn off when I get a new phone or reset it. Well after the first 3 amber alerts. I was in an elevator the other day and 3 phones went off at the same time for an amber alert. The system has good intentions, but it goes off too many times and isn't useful.

I like the app from my local fox station. A simple notificnation in the notification bar.