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Hacked Tornado Sirens Taken Offline In Two Texas Cities Ahead of Major Storm (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A hacker set off the tornado emergency sirens in the middle of the night last week across two North Texas towns. Following the unauthorized intrusion, city authorities had to shut down their emergency warning system a day before major storms and potential tornados were set to hit the area. The false alarm caused quite the panic in the two towns, as locals were already on the edge of their seats regarding incoming storms. The city had run tests of the tornado alarm sirens a week before, but the tests were set during the middle of the day and had long concluded. The two hacked systems were taken offline the next morning, and remained offline ever since.
Bad weather, including storms and potential tornadoes, was announced for all last week in the North Texas area. A severe thunderstorm hit the two cities the following night, on March 13. Thunderstorms are known to produce brief tornadoes, but luck had it that no tornado formed and hit the towns that day. Tornadoes are frequent in Texas, as the state is located in Tornado Alley, and tornado season, a period of the year between March and May when most tornadoes happen, had officially begun. Nevertheless, a tornado didn't form on March 13, and, luckily, the sirens weren't needed.
Bad weather, including storms and potential tornadoes, was announced for all last week in the North Texas area. A severe thunderstorm hit the two cities the following night, on March 13. Thunderstorms are known to produce brief tornadoes, but luck had it that no tornado formed and hit the towns that day. Tornadoes are frequent in Texas, as the state is located in Tornado Alley, and tornado season, a period of the year between March and May when most tornadoes happen, had officially begun. Nevertheless, a tornado didn't form on March 13, and, luckily, the sirens weren't needed.
It's times like that you kinda wish cracking/hacking carried the death penalty ...
For example, if some vandal spray painted the traffic light covers and make them useless, or drops a sackful of nails on a highway, he/she could cause huge damage. We don't immediately take DoT for not creating secure highways where vadals could not mess with traffic lights or strew nails on the road.
Precisely.
Believe it or not, it's legal to leave your door unlocked, and if someone comes in and commits crimes they are still guilty.
Somewhere someone doesn't know it yet, but they are going to get the book tossed at them. We have a whole host of natural disasters that can hit, and for all of them seconds count. Almost everyone gets a warning they can react to when it comes to tornados.
Should anyone lose their lives as a result of these systems being turned off, the culprit should get a manslaughter count for each one.
I'm all for ethical hacking, but this is no where near close.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
You'd think the other cities in the area would have learned from this vulnerability and fixed the problem.
Believe it or not, it's not at all unlikely that word of the problem never got to the right people. And even if they were aware of it it's not axiomatic that they would be able to fix the problem. They might not have the budget or it might require coordination with (possibly uncooperative) other municipalities or it might be technologically impossible to "fix" the problem with existing equipment and budget. Stuff like this usually requires budgeting and possibly even taxpayer approval and doesn't tend to happen overnight.
Although that would require local governments to be competent.
Sigh... Just because not everything happens perfectly all the time does not imply local government is incompetent. Did it occur to you that the tech involved might be old and that the taxpayers haven't approved the money to replace the equipment? It's entirely plausible they don't have the resources to deal with the problem even if they are aware of it.
The meme that government is incompetent is really tired. No institution does everything perfectly, public or private. Just because they have a failure in one task it does not follow that they are generally incompetent. There are lots of things you don't do well either. Should we declare you to be incompetent every time you overlook something or don't handle it perfectly?
Everyone complains about government incompetence, but nobody wants to pay to have a competent government.