Hacker Wakes Up Dallas with 156 Emergency Sirens

Megalith

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A hacker has managed to piss off the entire city of Dallas by hacking into its emergency sirens network and setting them off shortly after midnight. It wasn’t until 50 minutes later that the city’s response teams were able to fix the problem. The Director of Dallas' Office of Emergency Management suggests that finding the hacker would be like "finding a needle in a haystack," so I guess Dallas better stock up on ear plugs.

Dallas officials blame computer hacking for setting off emergency sirens throughout the city early Saturday. 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. Officials don't know who was responsible for the hacking, but Vaz said "with a good deal of confidence that this was someone outside our system" and in the Dallas area. The city has figured out how the emergency system was compromised and is working to prevent it from happening again, he said. It's a "very concerning" issue that Dallas has never faced.
 
What really would have actually been funny if he had somehow rigged them to play the Mario theme.

Not sure if those sirens are able to be manipulated like that or not, but we've seen floppy drives and such playing songs here.
 
I bet the person who did it doesn't even live in Dallas. Either that or someone hit the wrong button and just decided to blame a hacker.
 
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I work for a fairly large county government.

Like Master Shake I would first guess an inside job.

That said, the software that runs this type of stuff is generally pretty poor from what I have seen. The markets are small/niche enough where the vendors are small and in many cases fairly behind the current standards/practices of software features/development.
 
Hacker one minute after midnight(epilepsy warning) -

tumblr_o2xteaKFq71snqls0o1_400.gif

After realizing how goddamn annoying that is I put spoilers on it :( You're welcome.
 
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Most sirens are set off using simple DTMF tones, if you know the correct frequencies its not hard. It was someone within the Dallas area.
 
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Wonder how many pants were soiled in dallas..:wacky: Maybe this was a great way to boost underwear sales :greedy:
 
Hacker one minute after midnight -

tumblr_o2xteaKFq71snqls0o1_400.gif

After realizing how goddamn annoying that is I put spoilers on it. You're welcome.

Aww shit I am getting a warrant as we speak cause you caused me to have a seizure. Lol
 
If they find a single individual who turns out to be the responsible party for this my recommendation for a punishment would be lock him/her/it in a small room with one of those air raid sirens and turn it on for 24 hours. If he/she/it hasn't clawed out his/her/its own ear drums in that period of time then another 24, and so on till that finally happens.
 
It's funny enough that I hope he gets away with it.

He'd better hope so too, because can you imagine all the butthurt people that are going to be claiming "mental anguish" and other such nonsense? They'll probably try him under the patriot act.
 
I'd put my dollar on default passwords left in place

Probably or really easy to guess. I can't tell you how many companies I deal with that have their master password as CompanynameYEAR. Seriously.

"We have to use a capital, a number, needs to be 10+ long, and we have to change every year .. I know! Microsoft2017. We'll always remember the year!"
 
Whoever did this is a fargin idjit no doubt, but that is pretty funny. Like when you were a kid and someone was giving the substitute teacher a hard time. You feel bad for the teacher but you're also trying not to laugh.
 
Eh, if they catch him fine em like 30 grand and like 15-30 days in jail. This should be enough to deter people from shit like this but better then just a slap on the wrist or like 20 years in jail. Imagine how much this cost the city overall, I feel like 30 grand is a good number. I mean, if there is no punishment, imagine if this fucker does this for every night non stop. People are all like lol but there's a reason you need to smack down idiots
 
I live in Dallas. I was playing Ark: Survival Evolved at the time. Checked the radar. It was blank. Someone on the local news facebook page posted that the siren was due to air raid by Russia because of the air strike in Syria.
 
If a computer was hacked to do this then WHY IN THE HELL is a emergency system connected to the damn internet!?!?!
 
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According to some we don't have to worry about the net being attacked...

1425_3.jpg
 
And while this hacker thought this was cute....
He likely robbed people of sleep
and this has been known to cause car accidents, and workplace accidents. Some of them fatal. If it could be linked to a death, he could face man slaughter charges on top of hacking. (Depends on how much an ass the DA wants to be to make an example of him.) Emergency sirens are there for EMERGENCIES. Imagine that.
 
And while this hacker thought this was cute....
He likely robbed people of sleep
and this has been known to cause car accidents, and workplace accidents. Some of them fatal. If it could be linked to a death, he could face man slaughter charges on top of hacking. (Depends on how much an ass the DA wants to be to make an example of him.) Emergency sirens are there for EMERGENCIES. Imagine that.
that's an incredible stretch...

If I can't catch a wink of sleep on a long flight because some parent cant control their whiney little brat, and I get into a serious accident on the drive home from the airport, is the accident that parent's fault? Can they be held liable? helllllllll no. it'd be my own damned fault for making the irresponsible decision to drive when impaired by the lack of rest.

sure what this person (these people?) did with the sirens was a pretty screwed up thing to do...but at some point it'd still come down to a person's personal responsibility to judge that they were fit to drive, operate machinery, etc.
 
that's an incredible stretch...

but at some point it'd still come down to a person's personal responsibility to judge that they were fit to drive, operate machinery, etc.

For some people it's not an option if they go to work or not. Doctors, teachers, or assembly line workers are examples.

Yes I will admit it is a realllll stretch. I'm not going to argue that. But when they want to make an example of you...I've seen some pretty bogus trumped up charges. I've seen lawsuits against companies for providing an unsafe environment because employees didn't get enough rest. But yes, if some DA wanted to be an A$$ then he could.

Case in point, burgler breaks into house. In the process he wakes up the owner and the owner freaking out has a heart attack. The burgler is now actually on the hook for manslaughter. If you think this is BS, I've seen this go to trail and he was convicted.
 
It's just showing how vulnerable is the system. All is connected but nothing is protected. :whistle:
 
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