[EAS] Dallas warning sirens hacked - maybe

[Ed Czarnecki]

To Barry's point on the recycling of the alert for 90+ minutes, I suspect
there is a feature in the siren system in question that was exploited
(perhaps inadvertently) where the system used each siren as a repeater -
which is why all of them needed to be turned off.  Essentially a meshed
"daisy chain" - but no duplicate detection of DTMF tones to keep the signal
from going in a perpetual loop.

As for Arts comment on the City Manager (not that I'm defending him), I
suspect his statements reflect more a lack of knowledge than a desire to
promote obscurity.  And not sure I would expect many elected officials to
know the difference between a "hack" and a peanut butter sandwich.
Broadnax probably spoke to what he understood of the details he was briefed
- he's not a techie.  Plus, he was speaking in crisis communications mode,
not for vulnerability disclosure.

The latter, however, is a different matter for the vendor and its users.
Since this is apparently not a "cyber" issue, it probably won't go through
CERT.

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Botterell,
Arthur at CalOES

The ever-browsable Ars Technica has an item on the Dallas Incident today.
<https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/dallas-siren-hack-us
ed-radio-signals-to-spoof-alarm-says-city-manager/>

Editor Sean Gallagher quotes the Dallas City Manager as distinguishing