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posted by takyon on Monday April 10 2017, @12:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the ultimate-shouting dept.

Starting shortly before midnight Friday, emergency sirens all over the Dallas, Texas started blaring even though there was no emergency:

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.

Deactivating the emergency alert system was the only way to stop the sirens:

The system remained shut down Saturday while crews safeguarded it from another hack. The city said the system should be restored Sunday or Monday — in time for thunderstorms that are expected to begin rolling through the area early next week.

[...] Dallas officials said they have begun working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to add an alert system that would send messages to all cellphones in the area when there is an emergency.


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  • (Score: 1) by WillR on Monday April 10 2017, @06:12PM

    by WillR (2012) on Monday April 10 2017, @06:12PM (#491790)
    Welcome to American civil infrastructure. Access to all sites is controlled by our super-secure employee ID badge - a hard hat and high-viz vest, the password to everything is "1 2 3 4", and it's usually written on a card inside the control box in case anyone forgets.