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US Hacker Sets Off 156 Sirens At Midnight (dallasnews.com)
"I had the displeasure of being awoken at midnight to the sounds of civil-defense/air-raid sirens," writes very-long-time Slashdot reader SigIO, blaming "some schmuck with a twisted sense of humor." The Dallas News reports:
Rocky Vaz, director of Dallas' Office of Emergency Management, said that all 156 of the city's sirens were activated more than a dozen times... Dallas officials blame computer hacking for setting off emergency sirens throughout the city early Saturday... It took until about 1:20 a.m. to silence them for good because the emergency system had to be deactivated. The system remained shut down Saturday while crews safeguarded it from another hack.
The city has figured out how the emergency system was compromised and is working to prevent it from happening again, he said... The city said the system should be restored Sunday or Monday.
City officials reported 4,400 calls to their 9-1-1 emergency phone number in the first four hours of Saturday morning, with over 800 occurring in that first 15 minutes when all 156 sirens started going off simultaneously.
The city has figured out how the emergency system was compromised and is working to prevent it from happening again, he said... The city said the system should be restored Sunday or Monday.
City officials reported 4,400 calls to their 9-1-1 emergency phone number in the first four hours of Saturday morning, with over 800 occurring in that first 15 minutes when all 156 sirens started going off simultaneously.
Everywhere has shit security. Every manager is a moron. Everything is dangerous.
A door being unlocked does not give one the right to steal what's behind it, and similarly having a vulnerable system does not give one the right to attack it.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
On the one hand, you have a low-damage attack that has happened once in a few decades. On the other, you have the real cost of continually upgrading and hardening (and re-hardening) a system over those few decades, taking funding away from other public programs.
As a taxpayer, I'm okay with risking an unscheduled wakeup, if it means my local high school gets an arts program. As a security expert, I'm still okay with the low risk of leaving such vulnerabilities open, as long as they aren't able to be used as staging for other attacks.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
He didn't break the 911 emergency number. The people did that to themselves by flooding the number with calls. Blame where blame is due.
Those people were idiots. If the sirens are blaring, then it is obvious that the authorities are already aware of the problem.
You know Russia has subs parked on every undersea communication link that the US has right? The first blow in any war will be the US having its metaphorical eyes, ears, and tongue hacked off.
Hence the interest in satellite-to-satellite communications.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"