US Hacker Sets Off 156 Sirens At Midnight (dallasnews.com) 230
"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.
Don't encourage him (Score:2, Insightful)
He's a dick who doesn't give a shit about endangering people who really need emergency services.
Re:Don't encourage him (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If no one knows what to do when they hear the siren, then there's really not much point in having the siren in the first place.
1.2 million people live in Dallas. 4400 confused people, or about a third of 1%, dialed 911. You can't extrapolate from that to say that "no one" knew what to do.
For the clueless, here is what you should do when you hear a siren:
1. If you are in a tsunami warning area, head for higher ground.
2. Make sure your house isn't on fire.
3. If you have an air raid or fallout shelter, get in and seal the door.
4. If none of the above apply, then go back to bed and hope that someone else deals with the problem.
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Radio / TV (Score:3)
The article did not say what the immediate response of the authorities was, did radio and TV stations promptly transmit a 'do not worry' message?
How does this work in the US ?
Here around in Europe, the authorities are supposed to immediately broadcast informations about the alert on all available channels (TV, radio, web, public announcement systems, etc.) informing about the nature of the threat and the proper procedure to follow to stay sage.
(Well in theory. In practice, given the relative peacefulness of life Europe, 99.9% times you're going to hear a siren, it's just a test of the system as announced the day before in the local newspaper / newsc
Re:Radio / TV (Score:4, Informative)
>"How does this work in the US ? Here around in Europe, the authorities are supposed to immediately broadcast informations about the alert on all available channels (TV, radio, web, public announcement systems, etc.) "
Correct, that is the way it works here. If sirens go off, you are supposed to seek out a broadcast to determine the nature of the emergency. Where I live, it is always a weather emergency (like a tornado warning; and no, even though we don't live in "tornado alley", several touch down every year).
They are also used for nuclear power plant incidents, extreme thunderstorms, hurricanes, and civil defense.
Re:Radio / TV (Score:4, Insightful)
In these days of shifting from "Cable is King" to Cord Cutters... well, as far as I know, they did get the cable companies to put emergency interrupt capability in every fucking channel. But it's a bit hard to do that with Netflix, or even an https request.
And the problem with disaster emergencies is that they are so infrequent that the mindless masses have no clue what to do, because it hasn't happened since the last Oscars, and that's as far as they can remember before their ADD kicks in and they start wondering what all the gossip page celebrities are doing.
To make it worse, now mostly mundane stuff has become an "ALERT!!!!!111!!!", which contributes to giving everyone alert fatigue, and when something real happens, they don't even know if they are supposed to care. But a siren going off while they're trying to sleep? In the land of people calling 9-1-1 because their fast food isn't fast enough?
Re:Radio / TV (Score:5, Informative)
I
To make it worse, now mostly mundane stuff has become an "ALERT!!!!!111!!!", which contributes to giving everyone alert fatigue, and when something real happens, they don't even know if they are supposed to care?
Exactly this. We've gotten so many alerts that we gave up and turned them off. And most were stupid. Most are too far away, most are false alarms, like when a woman thought her kid was abducted by her Ex, and it turned out the little girl had gotten in the car, took it out of gear, and the car drifted down the driveway and into the nearby woods. Even so, that alert was like 200 miles away.
We had one right in our neighborhood when a little boy was a couple minutes late walking home from school. Full alert with the dogs and police and rescue groups activated. Turned out the reason he was 5 minutes late was he stopped to talk to a friend. So 10 minutes after the alert, it was called off. And my alerts were all turned off.
Society might be happy to go insane, And turn it up to 11 on everything, but I don't feel like participating.
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About a year ago, my employer used our cellphone emergency alert system (originally intended to warn everyone of an actual campus emergency) to call everyone at 12:30 a.m. with a prerecorded message, telling every university employee that a shooting had occurred at a restaurant about 1.5 miles from campus. About an hour later, we got another alert telling us
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Yesterday, I was driving around with my GF, and her phone made a awful noise. Turned out there was an Amber Alert. For a second I wondered why my phone hadn't gone off, then I remembered I'd turned off Amber Alerts after that time it went off 5 times at night for an alert in a nearby city that turned out to be a custody dispute.
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Ach. Did you folks get the sexual assault notices? I kept them off my phone, but still get email. Most are weird, and tend to go like this: An unknown person was assaulted by an unknown person at an unknown time in an unknown location. The report was made by an unknown person. It was not known if the assailant knew the victim.
And they wonder why no one wants to get those required by law to make alerts.
Re:Radio / TV (Score:4, Interesting)
> In these days of shifting from "Cable is King" to Cord Cutters... well, as far as I know,
> they did get the cable companies to put emergency interrupt capability in every
> fucking channel. But it's a bit hard to do that with Netflix, or even an https request.
That's where AM and FM radio excel. Turn it on and listen. They both have longer range than cellphone cells, and continue functioning when the cell network gets overloaded. While we're at it, most smartphones *SHOULD* be capable of FM radio reception. But many smartphones in the USA are deliberately crippled, due to cell carriers demading this from OEMs. This is greed, pure and simple. The carriers want people to pay through the nose for data over-usage, rather than listening to FM radio for free. https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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In Dallas, 99% of our sirens are for tornados. Get to your bathroom or closet.
Good idea, because when I hear the sirens, I shit myself.
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If no one knows what to do when they hear the siren, then there's really not much point in having the siren in the first place.
1.2 million people live in Dallas. 4400 confused people, or about a third of 1%, dialed 911. You can't extrapolate from that to say that "no one" knew what to do.
For the clueless, here is what you should do when you hear a siren:
1 Check facebook
2. Update your status
3. have all your friends send you thoughts and prayers
FTFY
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5) climb onto your wife to heroically protect her with your body or whatever
One of the few perks of living in tornado alley is having sex in a raging thunderstorm with tornado sirens in the background.
Add some WWII air raid flavor by putting on your uniforms.
Re:Don't encourage him (Score:4, Funny)
If no one knows what to do when they hear the siren, then there's really not much point in having the siren in the first place.
1.2 million people live in Dallas. 4400 confused people, or about a third of 1%, dialed 911. You can't extrapolate from that to say that "no one" knew what to do.
For the clueless, here is what you should do when you hear a siren: 1. If you are in a tsunami warning area, head for higher ground. 2. Make sure your house isn't on fire. 3. If you have an air raid or fallout shelter, get in and seal the door. 4. If none of the above apply, then go back to bed and hope that someone else deals with the problem.
Great, you just killed everyone in tornado country. Hope you are happy.
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Re: Don't encourage him (Score:4, Informative)
Don't laugh, but that's actually how the sirens in my county are activated. Each fire station's siren has a tone pair along with an all siren tone pair and a cancel tone pair for the all call tone. For an auto accident you usually get (not sure of the order) Siren Tones, Fire Pager Tones, EMS Pager tones, and a human decoded auto accident tone. This is simulcast from two sites on the main frequency (not sure if the other UHF system is still active) and the audio is carried on the digital P25 dispatch talk group.
Oh and we don't use what the people in the business call VHF (15X to 16X MHz range) we use Low Band (3X and 4X MHz Range).
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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.
Then again, so is turning the Sirens into yet one more IoT failure point.
I remember when I pointed out that if it was cheap and easy to control all these IoT things, it would likewise be cheap and easy to get into them.
I remember when I was scoffed at every time I brought that up.
We are going to find out what things are connected to the internet in the next couple years by them failing.
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Probably because we mostly all preach it here to ourselves. Forgot to tell everyone else
They don't listen. I got tired of warning people. Now I just sit back and go "Poor Lambs, it's so hard some times, and those people are so mean!"
Except in here where I vent about it.
Maybe not what it seems... (Score:5, Informative)
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I like the way they blame the unknown entity "hackers" rather than accept responsibility for their own lax security. First and foremost it is their fault for running an open system. The hackers should be sought but first and foremost the problem is lax security.
I mostly agree, but not totally.
The sirens should not be on the internetz period. Nothing life critical should be on the internet. But The people who made these decisions are using the same level of stupid as the businesses who are stuck on Internet Exploder 6 because they designed their business around it.
But having lax security is not a a reason to exploit it. Just because I don't have armed guards with authorized lethal force around the perimeter of my yard, and razor wire to keep out the riffraff,
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They probably aren't on the internet; most of these sirens are radio-activated. If you have a big enough transmitter and know what to send, you're good to go. Much like the Emergency Alert System, security is being retro-fitted as an afterthought in the form of signed control messages. But the rest of your point is on target, the designers unfortunately decided to rely on obscurity (the frequency, the message format and contents, etc.) to secure these things. Until they've all been upgraded, we'll have to p
City full of Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
People, people, people, when the emergency sirens are sounding, the authorities already know about the emergency. You don't need to call 9-1-1 to tell them about it, really.
People are so incredibly stupid.
Far worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
So the sirens sound, and presumably the North Koreans have a nuclear strike on the way. And what do the good citizens do? _nothing_. Only 4400 actually tried to figure out what was wrong; the rest simply ignored it.
You might as well get rid of the entire system, nobody cares about it anyway...
Re:Far worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
The emergency number is for people with an actual emergency
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Yeah, but was there actually any information on radio or TV? Of course not: those weren't hacked.
Missiles are inbound in five minutes. What do you do next?
Re:Far worse... (Score:5, Informative)
So the sirens sound, and presumably the North Koreans have a nuclear strike on the way. And what do the good citizens do? _nothing_. Only 4400 actually tried to figure out what was wrong; the rest simply ignored it.
You might as well get rid of the entire system, nobody cares about it anyway...
Considering that the sirens are to get people indoors in the event of Severe Weather and that most people were probably indoors when they went off, it's not surprising they did _nothing_ apart from what they are supposed to do - monitor radio and television.
Dallas outdoor warning sirens. [dallascityhall.com]
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I wonder what would happen if a disaster happened right at noon?
Let me guess (Score:4, Funny)
Let me guess, SQL injection strikes again?
Re:Let me guess (Score:4, Funny)
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No up to date firewall? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No up to date firewall? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If it only costs them $800 to properly secure the civil defense alarms.... that won't buy your HS an arts program and they should lock it down. And when these alarms go off, we don't want people desensitized to them. It means get in your bomb shelter.
The last thing you want is to get nuked and have these alarms disabled beforehand. Few survivors beats no survivors.
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I'm very curious about the basis for your analysis. The only price tag mentioned in TFAs is a half-million-dollar contract to "maintain and repair" the system over the next 6 years. Roughly speaking, that's two salaried ($47,000/year) employees working full-time.
Per TFS, there are 156 alarm systems. At the low end, you're estimating a cost of $5 per system. That's not enough funding for a security consultant to sneeze at a system, let alone actually fix anything. Even if the $800 covers a centralized fix fo
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So have those 2 salaried employees learn how to lock down the system better? It doesn't take a specialized security consultant to learn typical IT best practices for locking down a public-facing system to reduce the likelihood of it getting pwned by a script kiddie.
If it's radio-based and uses DTMF tones and we're partying like it's 1979 it may be a little more interesting but not impossible to tackle. You'd probably have to replace some control systems with ones that support some form of authentication.
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I would suspect that the civil defense system if its computerized is weak on the computer side. I've worked with engineers recently on plant process control and they do a great job on the controls side, but their IT infrastructure and security is poor and they really resent being told what to do by non-"engineers".
So if its computerized, its setup screwy and not easy to fix unless you have a good working idea of the control setup, which nobody with an IT background will know how to control. I've dealt wit
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This gives away that you are out of your element. 100% security is impossible.
Of course it is with modern systems and humans playing any role. But if you can hack the 8-bit microcontroller in my 10 year old microwave remotely I'll personally hand you a solid gold trophy. Part of the problem is that people think that every single device on the planet needs to be connected to a network and run a clone of what was intended to be a multiuser timesharing system on a lightswitch.
You can get very near 100% with a lot of money and effort on simple systems however.
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And otters rape baby seals. What's your point. Life is a cancer in general but it is intriguing and I want to see it persist.
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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.
Well, yeah... it's not a problem, until it is, and then it's too late to solve. One prank per decade, and then they start running continually while a dozen other attacks are happening.
Most of the times when someone is telling me about a dog bite, the story contains the line "... and the owner said the dog had never bitten anyone before." Right. A dog never bites anyone, until the first time they do. I'm all for arts programs, but important infrastructure needs to be maintained at least somewhat.
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Problem is probably that your tax money does not go to either the arts programme, nor improving security, but is spent on security theatre, with police being 'tough on crime' and picking up people for jay-walking, walking through a park after 10PM or person use of cannabis instead.
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"It's alarming that towns are not fully proactive..."
Literally. :-)
In the past (Score:2)
Over the years the siren staff would get to know the other staff and no false calls and fake orders could occur.
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...Until John gets fired, and he calls Bob from the parking lot saying there's an unscheduled federal readiness inspection, including a response test.
Every system is vulnerable. The only difference is the attack vector.
Easily compromised (Score:5, Informative)
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I was amazed to find youtube vids by people who restore old air raid sirens, then drag them out into unpopulated regions to start them up.
Made my hobbies seem so insignificant... and quiet.
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The person who did this deserves to be fully prosecuted.
It's most likely the person who did this will never be caught.
That's not a siren. Now this is a siren. (Score:2)
Terrorist fears (Score:2)
"We had people asking if we were being attacked because of what's going on overseas."
So they called 911. When terrorism strikes, call 911 for all your news info! (Not really, that's a bad idea).
I've seen that film (Score:2)
Then, when the real air attack happens, two hours later, the alarm system is disconnected, I think that was with a museum or something, but the idea is the same. RIP Dallas.
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Oh please, (Score:2)
I lived literally across the street from one of those fucking things and was working second shift. Every single fucking "test" Wednesday, I would wake up at 10 am in sheer fucking terror and try to hide under a desk thanks to the duck and cover indoctrination I was given as a child.
Awww, it went off when you were awake? My tiny violin laughs in your general direction.
Air raid sirens??? How delightfully "Cold War" (Score:2)
So far as I am aware we don't have any such things her in the UK (I haven't seen one, heard one being tested, received a leaflet about them or seen a news report about them). We certainly used to have them when I was a child back in the 1970s and I remember occasionally hearing the one in our village being tested when I was at school. But we got rid of them all when the cold war ended.
I can see how such a thin
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I hear them from time to time here in the UK. Could be for individual buildings or at larger scale, I don't know.
Rgds
Damon
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They aren't air raid sirens.
Dallas outdoor warning sirens. [dallascityhall.com]
"lie in a ditch or ravine" is suicideal (Score:2)
The page advises:
If this is an approaching electrical storm (and tornadoes are often VERY lightning-generating), lying in a ditch or other cut in the ground can be suicidal.
When lightning str
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Apologies for my ignorance, but are sirens like this common in the USA and if so, what for? So far as I am aware we don't have any such things her in the UK (I haven't seen one, heard one being tested, received a leaflet about them or seen a news report about them). We certainly used to have them when I was a child back in the 1970s and I remember occasionally hearing the one in our village being tested when I was at school. But we got rid of them all when the cold war ended. I can see how such a thing might be useful in areas where tornados could be expected, but (and again sorry for my ignorance) I thought that tornados couldn't strike built up areas like Dallas as big buildings broke up the air flow.
They are part of the emergency alert systems here. Their main use these days is to warn of severe weather such as tornadoes or dangerous thunderstorms. If you are outside (or even indoors if close enough to a siren) they can alert you to incoming dangerous weather and to seek shelter. The system also sends out automated signals to local TV and radio stations, as well as cell phones.
As for tornadoes striking cities, it's rare but not impossible. In 2000, for example, a tornado hit downtown Fort Worth, T [wikipedia.org]
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As someone who moved to the US (from Australia) hearing these sirens is one of the (many) surreal things about living here. Australia relies on radio, TV and SMS/phone alerts - no sirens.
The sirens here in the US sound like something out of an old cold war movie. Duck and cover! They test them at noon every Wednesday in the area I live in...
So what SHOULD people do? (Score:2)
I guess they should turn on their TV to see if the emergency broadcast system had kicked in. If it had, do what that says. But is that how people reacted.
The sirens appear to offer little purpose if they aren't achieving that; more thought required?
Yes, go ahead, blame the pranksters.... (Score:2)
Downgrade (Score:2)
"This is yet another serious example of the need for us to upgrade and better safeguard our city's technology infrastructure," Rawlings said
This is an even better example of the need to downgrade. The sirens weren't always connected to the Internet. What compelling reason requires them to be connected to the Internet now?
Internet security lesson #1: if it doesn't need to be connected to the Internet, don't connect it to the Internet.
They haven't found the hacker, which may not be US (Score:2)
I thought as much... (Score:2)
I live in Dallas. Worked overnight Friday, saw people posting things on facebook about the sirens going off at somewhat random locations across the city. Co-workers saw similar posts from their friends.
"Well that's fucked up. Who tests the sirens in the middle of the damn night?"
"No one. That's done at like 1pm on a Wed... Odds are some jackass managed to hack the control systems."
Now, if he were a super dick there'd be a hidden job to make it happen again in a week or two.
Air raid sirens? (Score:2)
Today I learned that the emergency weather warning service can double as an air raid service as well!
Re: Open letter to the so-called texan: STF up (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Texas: you have shit security and morons managing it. This is dangerous. I sounded the appropriate warning systems.
Re: Open letter to the so-called texan: STF up (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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For example, if there is a picket fence around a property it does not mean that this fence must be impenetrable, i.e. to have barbed wire, movement sensors, etc. But still it is a good picket fence which have got many useful functions.
And people should not think, - oh, this picket fence is not secure, so I can cross it and do whate
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There is no such thing as perfect security. Given enough time any system can be broken.
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There is no such thing as perfect security. Given enough time any system can be broken.
And when you have a system that the whole world can hack it, all you do is make it certain that it will be hacked.
A system where people need actual physical access isn't perfectly secure, but it is hella unlikely that a Nigerian Prince is going to have direct access to it.
I mean it isn't like we didn't have these things before the internet. Wonder how humans survived?
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A door being unlocked does not give one the right to steal what's behind it
That is correct. However, when the entire world has immediate access to that door, then not securing the door makes you an incompetent idiot who has no business holding any job related to security.
Let's go, mod AC up.
Especially in a country like the US, where we have the dual issues of being interventionist, and being top of the worldwide heap for a while, we make a lot of enemies (don't feel smug about it, everyone gets a turn) Just being at the top of the heap means there are groups who want to tear you down.
And the internet invites them into our living rooms, and our warning sirens. And a lot of other things as well. We've put things on the IoT that never should have been there. IoT is a pret
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Now can you tell us where is this line in the digital world? Is it you IP address ? Or maybe it's you router ? Or your web server's TCP port number ?
If you access any of those with the intent to hack, then you might go to jail for it. People have gone to jail for going to a URL with their browser.
See, the door analogy isn't that obvious in the digital world.
I'll clarify it for you: break into someone's house, go to jail. Break into someone's computer system, go to jail. That is the analogy. It's not perfect, but the point is correct: "poor security" isn't a defense in a court of law.
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Did I break in when I performed the equivalent of asking your PC to let me connect to it? No falsified credentials, no lock picking, just a nice and pleasant "excuse me Mr PC, may I view your c-drive please?"
Yes.
Likewise, if I change a query string variable, and suddenly I can see my neighbor's account information, I have no way of knowing whether or not AT&T meant for me to be able to view that, or whether their "Crazy Ex" is in the building granting access to things that others should not see.
It doesn't matter. What matters is what the jury will think of your intentions.
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What attack? That was normal operation of the sirens. An attack would have been if he cranked up the volume and blew them out. Or maybe planting malware for more nefarious purposes. If you leave your door unlocked and somebody comes by and opens then closes it every few minutes is that an attack?
You don't buy into psychological warfare?
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Eh... not necessarily.
In a past professional life, I maintained an Emergency Broadcast System transmitter. EBS works by cutting into radio transmissions if a neighboring station transmits the right signal, repeating the broadcast on the local station. Essentially, if one station reported an emergency, the whole region would repeat it automatically. If the sirens work similarly, hijacking one would trigger the whole system.
The whole point is moot, anyway. Ability doesn't need to be shown.
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Every time one of these things happens slashdot blames the sys admins.
I don't know about that. I know myself, I blame the dumfuks who decided to put life-critical systems on the internet. That should not even be legal.
And those sirens are life critical. Texas is hit by a fair number of tornadoes, and the public siren is the last leg of "get your ass under cover. A lot of people have no doubt been saved by the sirens.
So if someone wanted to start invoking "boy who cried wolf" syndrome, just start sending a lot of commands for false alarms.
Sysadmins just do what they
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Maybe you should be grateful. He has exposed a security hole that will now be fixed - hopefully. Far better than it being found after, for instance, an arsonist disables the alarms before burning down a neighbourhood.
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Re:Russians did it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
But in humans propensity for insanity, we'll no doubt send up some satellite killers, and the resulting rubble will make our first war in space be our last for at least a hundred years, depending on the orbital decay And that's we as in all of us.
And for Ivan bragging about his subs, why would you cut off one of the best weapons you have? Cutting off the US would hurt you and your tactics more than ours. How you going to alter the vote counts then?
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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.
Sure, but the Russians have subs parked near every satellite too -- checkmate.
Better Theory (Score:3)
It's Russia. If that's not paranoia, the odds are that those subs have been there since before the USSR collapsed--and are still there because they're not going anywhere, unless somebody works out how to tow a mildly defunct sub that can't manage to surface.
I'm getting rather amused by the Left's current paranoia about Russia's abilities. I'm more inclined to think that this air raid siren hack will turn out to be the result of incompetence, particularly given the speed of the patching of security. It lo
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I'm amazed that a modern country bothers to spend money maintaining (or rather, pretending to maintain) a system that achieves... well, nothing.
"Large hail"? Really? Though I'm sure it can be quite damaging and painful, it's not a large-scale emergency, especially if you have no way of knowing what the fuck is going on.
And let's say, for instance, that it was warning of a retaliatory response. What, precisely, are you going to do about it? What action can an entire city take that will significantly enhan
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I'm amazed that a modern country bothers to spend money maintaining (or rather, pretending to maintain) a system that achieves... well, nothing.
"Large hail"? Really? Though I'm sure it can be quite damaging and painful, it's not a large-scale emergency, especially if you have no way of knowing what the fuck is going on.
OK, so from the rest of your comment it's obvious you don't understand. I am not in Texas, but where I live we do have these warning sirens. They are absolutely real, and for good reason. They are mainly used for tornadoes, which are absolutely fucking deadly. If the tornado siren goes off in the middle of the night, I would immediately get my family into our basement. That would absolutely save lives in a real emergency. I don't know where the hell you live, but you seem to be unaware of things in th
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The kid should be stung up for something like this.
You could jail him under a siren and test it a lot.
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I'm sure that it is possible to set up a Raspberry Pi to authenticate the received touch tones in a way similar to the two-factor authentication fobs, at a much reduced cost, no? Or am I missing something?
What you're missing is that it's a life-critical system that has to run unattended for years and work every time when needed, or people depending on it may be injured or killed.
So the equipment has to be engineered, built, and tested to high standards.
How high? High enough to convince the insurance compan
Internet? (Score:2)
Go to the government and find the stupid, cheap, incompetent anal aperture(s) who decided to save a few dollars by connecting a CIVIL DEFENCE system INSECURELY to the INTERNET,..
What makes you think it was done over then Internet?
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> Do we really expect everyone to obsess over every system to prevent idiots
> from hacking them or should we focus on punishing those who do the hacking.
When "idiots" can compromise a warning system, and potentially cause a lot of deaths,YES!
> Its like saying people who paint graffiti are not the
> issue, we should make walls that do not accept graffiti.
People who paint graffiti are *AN* issue. The problem is that there are a lot of assholes, and just plain evil people, out there. And that's just
Attack cross-section of networked things: large (Score:2)
There's a large difference between a vulnerability that requires someone to be physically present to exploit it (graffiti on a wall) and a vulnerability that potentially anyone on the planet with an internet connection can exploit--or a radio.
I actually agree with you, it's often not cost-effective to secure things that require physical access to exploit. However, network-connected things have potentially billions of attackers.
Furthermore, the attacks can be automated, so that one person can attack millio