How a Joke Tweet Brought 911 to its Knees

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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I think most of us have had that experience where something intended as a joke went a little bit too far, and you regretted it. Luckily in my case, this never resulted in taking down the 911 system and potentially facing 12 years in prison. In this case, much like with Rick Rolling, a tweet with a condensed google link was supposedly intended to, when clicked on, pop up a "do you want to call 911" dialogue, making the user panic, and cancel it. Instead it resulted in no dialogue box, making the phone immediately call 911 without confirmation, and when people hung up it would call again, and again until the phone was rebooted. As if this weren't bad enough, people found the tweet funny, and retweeted it, sometimes with different link text, resulting in it being clicked 117,502 times.

If you ask me, whether the story is true, and the dialogue box was intended, or if it was actually intended to behave the way it did, this was a pretty bad idea, but probably not intended to do real harm. I look at it as youthful stupidity, not intent, and I'm torn on the subject of what a fitting punishment is. You want to make sure it isn't too light, so that people don't get the idea that messing with 911 is acceptable. As luck would have it it doesn't appear as if anyone was killed as a result of the prank, but that could have happened. Yet on the other hand, I have personally been involved in pranks in my more youthful and less deliberative days that could easily have gone too far and gotten out of control, and I can't help but feel some sympathy here.

"For over 12 hours in late October, 911 lines across the country were ringing so much that they nearly went down. Nobody knew why this was happening, until Phoenix police discovered that 18-year-old Meetkumar Hitesbhai Desai tweeted a link that caused iPhones to repeatedly dial 911. Now, more details have emerged about how the Twitter prank spiraled out of control."
 
Quartz-1 said:
More to the point, it's an epic fail on Apple's part. Imagine if the tweet had been for a premium-rate number?
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It sounds like it's an issue specifically related to 911 calls.

In most locations in the US, if you dial a number with the numbers 9 and 1 in it, and hang up before the call is completed, you'll have cops at your door. My kids did this when they were trying to dial my wife at work. They dialed part of the number and hung up when she didn't answer which is frequent when barbers have customers in their chairs, they don't answer. The kids hung up and within a few minutes the Military Police were at the house checking on my kids.

I'll bet this was a safety mechanism of the same sort.
 
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I think I'm reading this wrong. I read this as a simple JavaScript code can cause iPhone to spam 911 calls.
 
Sounds like apple has a shitty vulnerability where I can make someones phone auto dial whatever number I want with a shortened web link and a bit of scripting. I would call that an easy hack where an outsider gains control of the phone function of the phone from an outside source with no login and a simple URL with no confirmation.
 
Any type of malicious activity (that being defined as anything that's not the intended purpose) that affects the 911 system, whether it's a joke or not, is unacceptable so while I can't say that this kid or person or whatever is going to get 12 years in a pound-me-in-the-ass prison (sorry, just watched "Office Space" again yesterday so that phrase is fresh in the mind) but absolutely needs to get something more than a simple slap on the wrist. I don't care if it was meant as a joke or not - the basic fact that the "exploit" was in fact used is where the issue lies, and it was done with intent.
 
Grimlaking said:
Sounds like apple has a shitty vulnerability where I can make someones phone auto dial whatever number I want with a shortened web link and a bit of scripting. I would call that an easy hack where an outsider gains control of the phone function of the phone from an outside source with no login and a simple URL with no confirmation.
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Why can't the phone continuously monitor the keypad buffer for the 911 string and if identified, place a 911 call, put the phone in emergency mode, etc, whether it's a call, a text, a tweet, an email ?

Maybe there is no outsider exploit vulnerability at all, just an overactive safety measure.
 
lcpiper said:
It sounds like it's an issue specifically related to 911 calls.

In most locations in the US, if you dial a number with the numbers 9 and 1 in it, and hang up before the call is completed, you'll have cops at your door. My kids did this when they were trying to dial my wife at work. They dialed part of the number and hung up when she didn't answer which is frequent when barbers have customers in their chairs, they don't answer. The kids hung up and within a few minutes the Military Police were at the house checking on my kids.

I'll bet this was a safety mechanism of the same sort.
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One of the jobs I worked at, you had to dial 9 to get out, and every week, I had to make a long distance phone call, so I started with 9-1. I did once misdial 9-1-1, and explained the situation. Why 9 should be the number to leave the office network, I thought was a pretty stupid idea.

Anyway, as far as the incident, it was an 18 year old. This is why I'm all for bringing back punishment to children in schools vs today where you have to coddle them. Sure, everyone's made a joke that's gone way too far, but if you can't punish the kid, they'll never learn their lesson, and only go further, until they do something monumentally stupid and dangerous. And it's one thing for a Darwin Award, but another to bring damage upon the rest of society. But if they learn doing something wrong at a younger age brings punishment, where the wrong is far less dangerous, they're more likely not going to do something far more dangerous for fear of even worse punishment.

I'm sorry, I disagree with all those psychologists who suggest dropping all negative reinforcement, because positive reinforcement gives better results. Just because positive reinforcements may give better results does not mean there aren't times where you shouldn't use negative reinforcement.
 
Nytegard said:
One of the jobs I worked at, you had to dial 9 to get out, and every week, I had to make a long distance phone call, so I started with 9-1. I did once misdial 9-1-1, and explained the situation. Why 9 should be the number to leave the office network, I thought was a pretty stupid idea.

Anyway, as far as the incident, it was an 18 year old. This is why I'm all for bringing back punishment to children in schools vs today where you have to coddle them. Sure, everyone's made a joke that's gone way too far, but if you can't punish the kid, they'll never learn their lesson, and only go further, until they do something monumentally stupid and dangerous. And it's one thing for a Darwin Award, but another to bring damage upon the rest of society. But if they learn doing something wrong at a younger age brings punishment, where the wrong is far less dangerous, they're more likely not going to do something far more dangerous for fear of even worse punishment.

I'm sorry, I disagree with all those psychologists who suggest dropping all negative reinforcement, because positive reinforcement gives better results. Just because positive reinforcements may give better results does not mean there aren't times where you shouldn't use negative reinforcement.
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you could set that different, but my guess is that people selected 9 because that makes the most sense. By using 9 when it comes to extensions you can't use anything that starts with a 9 which means that you can't use the very last range so for 2 digits you have 00 - 89. For 3 digits you have 000 - 899... If you decided to use say 4, then you couldn't use a range there in the middle. By just removing the last range it is much easier to make extensions. The only other option would be 0 if you wanted to stay easy, but 0 is the operator. That said i have been to some places that use other numbers. One customer I setup a few months ago used 7 with their old system so I put them to 7 with ours also.
 
oh.... is this why 911 service outage for AT&T phones is happening in my area (and probably others) today? :whistle:

(What I keep seeing everytime I've looked at weather channel)

"THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS TRANSMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE WEST VIRGINIA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY CHARLESTON WEST VIRGINIA. THERE IS AN ISSUE WITH A T AND T PHONES NOT BEING ABLE TO CALL LOCAL 9 1 1. IF YOU HAVE AN EMERGENCY, CALL FROM AN ALTERNATE PHONE."
 
2 weeks in the county jail followed by 1,000 hours of community service.
 
Moral of the story: Social media is stupid and dangerous.
 
12 years in prison seems a bit extreme. I get that he needs to be punished, but putting a guy in prison and paying for him for 12 years, especially since he is an idiot, but not a scumbag seems bit extreme.

Also I pocket called 911 from some shitty brick phone before. I'm sure phones still have the emergency number built in but this one if I remember right if you dialed 1 then hit send would dial 911. They could tell I was at a party, so they called me back, asked if everything was cool. It was, and that was the end of it. The cops DID show up later but that was fairly typical for a Thursday.

When my house was burglarized I had to call 911 in Sacramento and they wouldn't even dispatch an officer.
 
Using 911 for a prank is a terribly poor decision and for that I have no sympathy for this guy. What idiot uses 911 for pranks? He could have done something else to demonstrate the bug or call some BS or spammer number instead. Being such a serious vulnerability he really shouldn't have released it to the public at all. Though I do agree that 12 years is a bit much but given the outcome of this, it put many people in grave danger not to mention the cost to taxpayers.
 
" a tweet with a condensed google link was supposedly intended to, when clicked on, pop up a "do you want to call 911" dialogue, making the user panic, and cancel it. "

It seems like if the intent was just to startle people with a simple pop up message, he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of writing the code to make it do all the rest. I'd think it would be more complicated than adding "Else: Call 911" to the end.
 
dethklokworkorange said:
" a tweet with a condensed google link was supposedly intended to, when clicked on, pop up a "do you want to call 911" dialogue, making the user panic, and cancel it. "

It seems like if the intent was just to startle people with a simple pop up message, he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of writing the code to make it do all the rest. I'd think it would be more complicated than adding "Else: Call 911" to the end.
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I fully agree. If you put the effort into doing all that it is well past the point of that wasn't my intent. If you build a bomb that is real and put it into a school but put a switch on it that says pushing this button will set off the bomb, no matter the reason the bomb explodes (somebody pushing it or short that sets it off) you still built a real bomb and put it into a school. Same here, building a program that can call 911 means that you intended for it to call 911. Be it a joke to make 10 people accidently select Yes or have every phone call out, they still wanted the program to get false calls sent to 911.
 
Krazy925 said:
12 years in prison seems a bit extreme. I get that he needs to be punished, but putting a guy in prison and paying for him for 12 years, especially since he is an idiot, but not a scumbag seems bit extreme.
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I would also punish the "celebrity" that retweeted it, as he should be much more liable for the damages

When my house was burglarized I had to call 911 in Sacramento and they wouldn't even dispatch an officer.
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So your house WAS broken into? Or was in the act of being broken into?

If it's the former, then yeah, call the police yourself it's not an emergency. If the later, then yeah I feel for you, but in my experience you need to let the police know you fear for your safety and that gets butts moving.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I would also punish the "celebrity" that retweeted it, as he should be much more liable for the damages


So your house WAS broken into? Or was in the act of being broken into?

If it's the former, then yeah, call the police yourself it's not an emergency. If the later, then yeah I feel for you, but in my experience you need to let the police know you fear for your safety and that gets butts moving.
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If you can prove the celebrity knew it would bring the system damage through negligence then absolutely. I'm not sure if we should just start punishing people though.

My house was broken into in 2009 in Sacramento. They stole cash and jewelry as well as some electronics. I figured out later it was the neighbor who came in through a back window.

Wasn't worth making a report about the small amount of money. It was still bullshit as they stole over a thousand dollars worth of stuff. We were noticing stuff gone for months.

Total invasion of your personal space.
 
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