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Dutch Telephone Outage Takes Out Nation's Emergency Number
- jabbernotty 7y agoAn alternative number has been spread through the national broadcasting association (the publicly funded tv, radio and web news).
- jabbernotty 7y agoTheir app has push capability, as far as I know that has been used as well. They have a very wide reach.
- LeonM 7y agoYep, I just received it on my phone, which wasn't fun because I was listening to music, my phone blasted the emergency tone at full volume through my earpods. It really hurt :( Anyway, good to see that the emergency system works. I just received a second message with a whatsapp number and twitter handle which you can use in case of emergency.
- DonHopkins 7y agoOh shit -- it was a really loud jarring sound, it must have been painful. They have recently started sending test phone alerts at the same time they perform the regular first Monday of the month noon emergency alert siren tests in Amsterdam. Maybe you should set an alarm just before then to make sure you're not listening to music! https://www.government.nl/topics/counterterrorism-and-national-security/question-and-answer/public-warning-sirens https://www.government.nl/topics/counterterrorism-and-nation...
- londons_explore 7y agoOr just turn emergency alerts off on your phone. Average number of millimorts saved by those alerts I bet is really low.
- LeonM 7y agoI don't want to turn it off, but it should obey the volume setting if headphones are connected (your phone can detect that). But I guess this is vendor specific, in my case it was a Samsung S9, maybe other vendors implement it differently
- darkhorn 7y ago>est phone alerts What is that? SMS? Phone call?
- tremon 7y agoCell broadcast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
- darkhorn 7y agoOh, I'm using this since early 2000s. And I've subscribed to several channels like location, emergency, tourism, football, weather. Most of them don't work. I get location messages regularly but they make SMS like sound. And my LG G5 doesn't have special sound settings in Cell Broatcasting app. So it looks like wheter you have the alert sound depends a bit on what phone/software you are using. I though that there is a new protocol. But anyways, I like cell broatcasting.
- GhostVII 7y agoI feel like that is a pretty significant issue with the alert system, and could cause legitimate hearing damage. If you have headphones in, it should be assumed that you are paying attention and don't need to be woken up, and play at low volume.
- consp 7y agoStrange thing is that it didn't send it over my Bluetooth headset as I wasn't listening at the time. >> it should be assumed that you are paying attention and don't need to be woken up That assumption is false. Last week we got one for likely dangerous smoke and we had to get out of the smoke and close all windows and stop ventilation in the house. You might want to wake up for that as some people use the headphones and fall asleep.
- kminehart 7y agoI think you missed the "if you have headphones in" part.
- antsar 7y agoOr you missed the "some people use the headphones and fall asleep" part. In that case, cranking up the volume still makes sense.
- GhostVII 7y agoThat's true, it is possible that someone could be sleeping with headphones in or something, but I don't think that is common enough to justify potentially giving people hearing damage. Maybe as a compromise it could play at the current volume (or lowest volume if volume is off) through headphones, rather than going up to full volume.
- kazen44 7y agoor just play the emergency alert through the speakers of the phone, instead of the headphones.
- cr1895 7y agoHere’s a live blog from the Dutch public broadcaster NOS (in Dutch): https://nos.nl/liveblog/2290490-112-storing-politie-geeft-alternatief-noodnummer-088-6628240.html https://nos.nl/liveblog/2290490-112-storing-politie-geeft-al...
- skrebbel 7y agoI just got an "NL Alert" about this, some kind of faux SMS sent straight to my phone. With a WhatsApp number, an alternative phone number, and a Twitter account. They seemed pretty well prepared. Emergency service via Twitter! Call me impressed if they can pull that off.
- DonHopkins 7y agoThe third alert included the Whatsapp number and twitter address for the police. There have been three alerts in the past hour. I'm hearing other people's loud phone alarms go off outside, several minutes after mine, so they weren't all sent out at the same time.
- unilynx 7y agoThat happens for us frequently at the bi-annual test - somehow the iPhones always pick up the cell broadcast minutes before the androids do. We figured it's just a priority order for the bomb shelters.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoIt is the same kind of format as the Amber Alert things I used to get in the states. How do they push that out? Based on location, cell tower usage, sim card?
- Tharkun 7y agoThis has happened several times over the past couple of years in Belgium as well. Bugs and mishaps happen, and I'm sure the systems were designed to be fault tolerant. But perhaps it's time to stop relying on POTS alone for emergency numbers? Is there any particular reason we can't reach emergency services over the internet? Even something as banal as Skype or Facetime would make for a decent backup.
- roywiggins 7y agoInternet outages have a nasty habit of knocking out modern 911 infrastructure... https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/28/18159110/centurylink-internet-911-outage-fcc-investigating https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/28/18159110/centurylink-int...
- londons_explore 7y agoEmergency services are apparantly too important to allow something as 'unreliable' as skype/facetime. I don't understand why regulators can't drop the reliability requirements and understand that if skype, facetime, whatsapp, viber, twitter, etc. all have 99.9% reliability, then the chances of them all being down at once is far lower than your POTS line being down. Just have a #911Emergency official hashtag and have a bunch of people reply to it. That's the way the people want it.
- DonHopkins 7y agoLast time the power went off in Amsterdam, the internet continued to work just fine.
- jacquesm 7y agoIt's a huge mess. It's been going on for hours and there is still no status report on how long it will take to fix this. Fire, Ambulance and police are all affected, and half the regular phone network is also out so there are no alternate paths available. Big fuckup, people will die because of this and the post-mortem will be a very interesting read.
- LeonM 7y agoWhat makes you think a telco will ever do a publicly accessible post-mortem after an outage? They will probably have to do one under government pressure, but it'll be so heavily NDA'd that no one will ever read it.
- jacquesm 7y ago> What makes you think a telco will ever do a publicly accessible post-mortem after an outage? The fact that they have a lot of egg on their face after a similar outage in 2012. Heads will roll over this one and politicians will certainly want answers.
- LeonM 7y agoLike I said, they will have to make one under government pressure, but I bet you they won't publicly release it.
- foota 7y agoDoes the Netherlands have something like Congressional hearings? Could come out at something like that.
- sandermvanvliet 7y agoYes, it’s called a “parlementaire enquête” but it’s a fairly heavy handed tool to wield so it’s not done very often
- consp 7y agoThe alternate path is whatsapp and twitter as mentioned in the alerts. Or ask the person with t-mobile/vodafone connections to call the alternative number. Though I do agree about the other parts.
- jacquesm 7y agoThe alerts have reached only a fraction of all subscribers. Interestingly, some KPN customers can still call each other.
- consp 7y agoMy empirical study for this is as follows: I have 7 phones on and around my desk, of which are 3 iOS devices (4s and newer), and 4 android (4.4 and up all different manufacturers, sony, samsung, hmd, one plus brand) with different or no operator sim installed and all but the 4s got it. I guess it is cell related in that case. edit: the 4s was subscribed to the kpn network. Others were not or I can no longer check. Strange thing is I'm getting them first through my personal phone's second sim (vodafone, primary is t-mobile).
- jacquesm 7y agoAre those on KPN? If so then that is interesting, if not then that is pretty much in line with the article. SMS and voice traffic within the KPN network is just fine, going outside or dialing in is not working and SMS traffic from the outside in also does not work (so far). No SIM is only interesting in sofar as those phones have attached themselves to the KPN network, they could choose any network for emergency services.
- WildGreenLeave 7y agoI'm having an iPhone XS, emergency alerts enabled and I did not receive a single message. I'm using KPN as my provider and am on the KPN network. Interestingly all of my coworker and friends did receive a message, but as far as I'm aware they are all on a different network. I do not like that the supposed 'emergency' messages dit not receive my phone at all. Not even delayed.
- m4lvin 7y agoMaybe related to the Cloudflare outage??? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20262214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20262214
- lowdose 7y agoIn the first emergency alert a completely wrong alternative number being broadcasted, plus a spelling error in the police station. After an hour the first mistake was corrected. I assume the authorities are collectively hanging in the curtains under the influence of a wildly spread panic attack.
- jacquesm 7y agoUgh. That is really sloppy, it also conditions people to ignore such errors in the future which will make it much easier to get them to believe all kinds of crap.
- n_u_l_l 7y agoYes, they somehow managed to broadcast the WhatsApp number of the local newspaper De Telegraaf.
- himlion 7y agoYeah, amazing how they manage to broadcast a wrong alternative emergency number to millions of people.
- huis 7y agoI'm not sure you can call this a big fuckup, we will have to wait for news about the cause. Yes it is bad, very bad. But I'm sure they got all the redundancy in place and thought about so much more than we can imagine. But even then there might be some extreme event that will throw 'soot in the food'. I think it is just great how this event is handled. Almost everybody I know knows the alternative alarm number. Police is in the streets so you can walk to them. And as far as we know there are no looters taking their chances. So yeah, bad, but we have to wait before we can mark it as big fuckup.
- krona 7y agoNational telephone networks 'solved' redundancy, what, a century ago? A similar problem is happening in the UK; airports trying to centralize air-traffic control to off-site locations to save a few pennies.
- huis 7y agoCould be, but we don't know yet.
- stingraycharles 7y agoThis is not just some internet uplink, it’s the national emergency number. And on top of that, they sent the wrong phone number with the NL Alert. Whatever the post-mortem will say, if the national emergency number goes down, it’s a huge fuck-up. People will die because of this.
- A_No_Name_Mouse 7y agoDidn't even receive an NL alert. My collegue sitting next to me did. I'm on KPN so I guess the alert depends on the specific provider.
- jacquesm 7y agoThis event should not have happened in the first place and it was demonstrably mis-handled in several critical ways. The fact that the police has responded in the proper way has nothing to do with how KPN has handled this so far and it immediately puts in question the retiring of the siren system used for emergencies, which for cost-cutting reasons has been replaced by the national mobile phone alert system, which apparently does not work when you really need it.
- magwa101 7y agoRussians.
- dang 7y agoNot here, please.
- magwa101 7y agoFunny huh? Right after Dutch charge Russians by name in MH17.
- dang 7y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Griffinsauce 7y ago"unrelated" being a key word there. My first thought was this might be a state level attack (or warning shot)
- throwawaywego 7y agoMe too. But it is a mere suspicion. We know that: - GRU has been stepping up its attacks on the West (anti-doping, chemical weapons, MH17 investigation) - US, Britain, and Israel attacked Iran with Stuxnet - Iran retaliated with cyber attacks on banks and electrical grids - Iran downed a drone - Number stations go crazy - US almost goes for military strike, but Trump calls it off and orders US Cyber Command to cyber-attack Iran, with focus on missile systems and spy networks. - BGP route leak (Allegheny Technologies Inc. caused the leak, and was a target for Titan Rain around 2014). - Dutch payment - and emergency response network goes down. Edit: According to a KPN spokesperson: "We have an indication of the cause, but a lot remains unclear. Anyway, this was not the result of a hack."
- dang 7y agoIn the case of sensational flamewar topics, we can presume that it's unrelated pending some evidence of a relation.
- Kim_Bruning 7y agoI had just finished work on an asterisk system when the issue hit. I was so frustrated that I couldn't find the issue. ... Until I checked the news and found out that things weren't working for anyone. Quickly put the customer onto the secondary fallback line, and now they're actually happy with me ;-)
- MuffinFlavored 7y agoWhat work were you doing on an asterisk system/what is an asterisk system?
- herpderperator 7y agoIn a nutshell, it's a very ubiquitous phone server (PBX.)[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_(PBX) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_(PBX)
- jeffrallen 7y agoSo it was YOUR fault!
- DonHopkins 7y agoI was playing SimCity, extremely immersed in the game, and I'd just bulldozed a road that had a power line going across it, then the power in the actual house I was in suddenly went out! I was stunned, and regretted what I'd just done, afraid it was my fault.
- LeonM 7y agoKPN now has a notice on the website frontpage that the outage is fixed and the emergency number is reachable again.
- fbi-director 7y agoSituation has been resolved as of now.
- NKosmatos 7y agoSearched for more technical details but couldn't find anything. Anyone knows who is the main vendor of KPN? Huawei, Ericsson, NokiaSiemens, ZTE? I bet the supplier is going to feel some 'heat' from this outage.
- jandeboevrie 7y agoHuawei runs most of KPN. Bet you we'll never know the real cause just management bllsht. The real reason probably is not spending money on the right places (aka people, redundancy, protocols, upgrades, etc) but on CEO lunches or stuff like that.
- darkhorn 7y agoThey should have used Erlang https://youtu.be/uKfKtXYLG78 https://youtu.be/uKfKtXYLG78 I wonder what coused this issue? Dependency issue in Maven? May be they cannot figure out what that Java error means?
- Zenst 7y agoI find it interesting that they published alternative emergency numbers upon social media and more importantly, push notification via mobile phone networks. Why couldn't those mobile phone networks of just rerouted the emergency number to the alternative number?
- zandjager 7y agoBecause not all the network was down/inaccessible; only KPN. So I'm guessing the alternative numbers were on the still reachable networks.
- Zenst 7y agoI was referring to the mobile networks able to do the broadcast and questioning why they couldn't of done a number routing for their network to rout all emergency calls to the alternative number. Which for their customer permutations of use, would be far more efficient and indeed safer if you factor in the delay in the user having to read an sms in the middle of a crisis that dictated calling the emergency service in the first place.
- Doxin 7y agoIt wasn't just the emergency number that was borken. The entire KPN telephony network was having issues. The alternative number could not be reached from phones using the KPN network, so having emergency calls on those phones redirect to the alternative wouldn't help much. Presumably the other networks didn't put routing into place since that'd be a rather large configuration change on short notice to a safety critical system.
- Zenst 7y agoAgain - the point I was making was. IF mobile networks were sending out a cell broadcast of an alternative number to use upon `their` networks. THEN why didn't they just do a routing change upon `their` networks. `their` networks were working - hence they was able to send out a network broadcast. They equally sent a new emergency number that was not upon KPN and as such worked. As for large network configuration changes - pish, it really isn't that hard and would literally be a simple update upon their network only that they could just as easily change back. Not talking a global change update, just a per network (mobile) that was working (or the ones that were and able to push out a cell notification). Hope that made it clearer for you.
- XCSme 7y agoThey sent like 5 emergency alerts on the phones, it was so confusing.
- tnolet 7y agoThey should have used Docker in React and then this would have never happened.
- majewsky 7y ago"React in Docker", that I can imagine. But "Docker in React"!? I demand to know how this works.
- kawfey 7y agoAny word if amateur radio operators are being put into service for this?
- oneplane 7y agoThat doesn't really exist much in The Netherlands. Probably because the infrastructure doesn't really attract alternative means of communication.
- doctorRetro 7y agoAside: Shout out to the telemarketer who pressured me to get a land line years ago because they're the only guaranteed access to emergency numbers and "never go down."
- softgrow 7y agoI used to work on reliability of the emergency number in South Australia which could stand: - failure of reserved circuits from outlying exchanges - failure of trunk exchange - failure of operators exchange - evacuation of operators - failure of backup operator exchange - evacuation of backup operators - failure of special circuits to emergency services - evacuation of emergency services operations rooms - failure of backup lines to emergency services - emergency services advertised alternate numbers (spread across multiple exchanges in some cases) etc etc Can't work out why just the emergency service number failed not other things as well. Bit surprised.