Summary: Last Friday night, as I'm sure you're all aware, all 156 emergency in Dallas went off for an hour and half around 11:45 p.m. 911 was completely inundated with panicked phone calls, and people were prepared for all hell to break loose around them. The City told everyone that it was a malfunction that caused them to go off, but are now saying that someone hacked the system and set every siren off.
Analysis/Synthesis: Ok honestly, when I found out that it was a hacker and not a tornado or a nuclear war, I laughed so hard. Some loser really sat down at midnight on a Friday night, and made every siren in Dallas wail until the City's whole emergency response team practically shut down. Who has that kind of time?? Or motivation?? Kudos to you, you big noise maker, yeah, you really showed us, *eye roll. This can't be connected to anything because I'm pretty sure this is a first. Ahahaha omfg.
Link to the article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/04/08/hacker-triggers-all-156-emergency-sirens-dallas/100212412/
This was pretty funny, although it is still worrisome that they were so easy to hack.
ReplyDeleteThe threat this poses is very real. A 6 minute 911 wait time vs a 10 second one, could be the difference between life and death for someone in a real emergency. Also, I can only imagine what might have happened if this was done during a particularly heavy rain. There would be panic, and almost guaranteed road accidents as people tried to evacuate from the "tornado"
ReplyDeleteThe fact that this was done on a pretty clear night suggests the hacker's motivation. This was probably done as a form of test to show the city of Dallas how easy it would be to do, so they can improve the system's security. This wasn't done on a whim either. In order to activate the sirens, the hacker would have had to monitor the activation tone (which changes daily) for months to deduce the frequency required to activate them on a given day.
It was especially worrying that they chose such a day to hack them. I don't know if it was a spur of the moment or planned for a long time, but the fact that they did it after Trump sent tomahawks to Syria only keeps us tenser.
ReplyDelete-Anna Czyzewski
I'm glad it was just a hack. That scared the crap out of me!
ReplyDeleteThe sirens, affected my neighborhood. I was asleep the whole time, but my parents weren't so fortunate.
ReplyDeleteI didn't hear the alarms, thank god. Fricken hackers, waking people up.
ReplyDelete