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Although this is an entirely different system, it brings to mind how badly insecure the US Emergency Alert System is, which is used for television and radio ale

Although this is an entirely different system, it brings to mind how badly insecure the US Emergency Alert System is, which is used for television and radio alerts. EAS was designed in the late eighties, when infosec was not a well-established, household-name field. It works by relaying an unencrypted signal; that rather unsettling data burst you hear when there's an Amber Alert or a thunderstorm warning. There's no authentication on this. There's no encryption. Literally anyone with software to generate NOAA SAME tones, together with a software-defined radio and amplifier, can walk near one of a handful of "primary entry points" and belt out an alert that gets mindlessly repeated across the country. It's already happened on a local level by simply logging into network-connected endecs at TV stations; probably none of them changed the default passwords. Every day I see something like this, I'm reminded of why anyone still considers security-by-obscurity to be a sound strategy. State actors are the prime target of vulnerabilities you call obscure.

manjushri 9y ago
>Literally anyone with software to generate NOAA SAME tones, together with a software-defined radio and amplifier, can walk near one of a handful of "primary entry points" and belt out an alert that gets mindlessly repeated across the country. So a fake alert can be sent out nationwide from broadcasting to just one access point??
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > So a fake alert can be sent out nationwide from broadcasting to just one access point?? I believe OP meant "country" as in "countryside", which is feasible when you're up on a hill and your signal can reach a distribution source antenna (which will then distribute your spoofed alert to its attached sirens).
  - ashleyn 9y ago
    No, I meant the country as in the United States. EAS on the national level works by playing telephone: hopping the alert from station to station in a mesh configuration. PEP stations are origins for national alerts.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      Oh wow. Clearly, something like widespread availability of SDRs was not an issue back then. I wonder why it hasn't been abused/trolled on a large scale, though. Really, if I were interested in trolling that's what I'd do: next to zero chance of the cops catching you as you won't leave a trail, plus the entire country will be wide awake once the sirens ring and it will likely need months or years until the government secures the stuff.
- X-Istence 9y ago
  Yes.
- ashleyn 9y ago
  I don't really know the precise technical details, but owing to how these stations serve as entry points for other stations, I would surmise all one would have to do is impersonate the original station and hundreds of other broadcasters would immediately begin relaying an alert in a mesh configuration. There is no authentication on this process (or at least there wasn't in the initial days of EAS before CAP/IPAWS), and any rogue ham or Russian spy could do it.
- finnthehuman 9y ago
  No. EAS doesn't cascade like that. Broadcasters are only mandated to monitor 2 stations, and the monitored stations are upstream in a distribution hierarchy. I can't speak to every broadcaster's configuration, but it'd probably propagate 2 or 3 hops.
snailmailman 9y ago
This reminds me of an annoying incident where I am at. All the tornado sirens near dallas were hacked one evening a while back. [1] It was more of an annoyance than anything, considering the weather was very clear. The worst part is that it was the middle of the night and everyone was trying to sleep. The alarms closest to me weren't going off, but you can hear those alarms quite a ways away. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/04/09/someone-hacked-every-tornado-siren-in-dallas-it-was-loud/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/04...

manjushri 9y ago

>Literally anyone with software to generate NOAA SAME tones, together with a software-defined radio and amplifier, can walk near one of a handful of "primary entry points" and belt out an alert that gets mindlessly repeated across the country. So a fake alert can be sent out nationwide from broadcasting to just one access point??

mschuster91 9y ago
> So a fake alert can be sent out nationwide from broadcasting to just one access point?? I believe OP meant "country" as in "countryside", which is feasible when you're up on a hill and your signal can reach a distribution source antenna (which will then distribute your spoofed alert to its attached sirens).
- ashleyn 9y ago
  No, I meant the country as in the United States. EAS on the national level works by playing telephone: hopping the alert from station to station in a mesh configuration. PEP stations are origins for national alerts.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    Oh wow. Clearly, something like widespread availability of SDRs was not an issue back then. I wonder why it hasn't been abused/trolled on a large scale, though. Really, if I were interested in trolling that's what I'd do: next to zero chance of the cops catching you as you won't leave a trail, plus the entire country will be wide awake once the sirens ring and it will likely need months or years until the government secures the stuff.
X-Istence 9y ago
Yes.
ashleyn 9y ago
I don't really know the precise technical details, but owing to how these stations serve as entry points for other stations, I would surmise all one would have to do is impersonate the original station and hundreds of other broadcasters would immediately begin relaying an alert in a mesh configuration. There is no authentication on this process (or at least there wasn't in the initial days of EAS before CAP/IPAWS), and any rogue ham or Russian spy could do it.
finnthehuman 9y ago
No. EAS doesn't cascade like that. Broadcasters are only mandated to monitor 2 stations, and the monitored stations are upstream in a distribution hierarchy. I can't speak to every broadcaster's configuration, but it'd probably propagate 2 or 3 hops.

snailmailman 9y ago

This reminds me of an annoying incident where I am at. All the tornado sirens near dallas were hacked one evening a while back. [1] It was more of an annoyance than anything, considering the weather was very clear. The worst part is that it was the middle of the night and everyone was trying to sleep. The alarms closest to me weren't going off, but you can hear those alarms quite a ways away. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/04/09/someone-hacked-every-tornado-siren-in-dallas-it-was-loud/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/04...