911 could face its own emergency: Hackers

CNET ^ | 09/09/2016

[BenLurkin]

Using a network of hacked smartphones, attackers could overwhelm a whole state's 911 system with endless calls, shutting out a huge portion of legitimate callers.

The approach, known as a denial of service attack, "is a significant threat to the availability of 911 service," wrote researchers Mordechai Guri, Yisroel Mirsky and Yuval Elovici in the paper.

The researchers looked at the state of North Carolina and created a model based on its 911 system. In the US, emergency response systems are run at the state or local level. If hackers compromised 6,000 smartphones with malicious software, they could make enough calls to 911 to block out half of all legitimate callers using cell phones in North Carolina.

A network of hacked smartphone, commandeered remotely to call 911 over and over again, may sound farfetched, but the researchers found it plausible based on how much malicious software already exists to target phones. They also point out that repeated phone calls from a hacked phone can't be blocked by the current system.

The researchers shared their findings with the US Department of Homeland Security, according to The Washington Post. DHS did not respond to a request for comment. The agency has previously warned of the dangers of a denial of service attack on emergency response infrastructure.

[sagar]

I blame the Russians. And Assange

[arl295]

you can do this with an IP phone system with “unlimited” trunks

[arl295]

heck you don’t even need to “hack” a system, just down load an IP pbx software and run it from an open WIFI connection at your local library or walmart