Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Epic pwnage is epic

TV stations all over the country have spent the last few years replacing the emergency notification system with a new, uber high tech networked emergency response system.  A design that's the uberest of uber high tech.  Translation: a target rich environment:
Hardware powering the US Emergency Alert System can be easily tricked into broadcasting bogus apocalyptic warnings from afar, say experts.

Researchers at computer security biz IOActive reckon they found private encryption keys within firmware updates for the devices; miscreants armed with this information could successfully remotely log into the hardware, installed at television and radio stations around the US, as an administrator and broadcast panic-inducing messages to the masses.

And the discovery comes just months after shortcomings in the Emergency Alert System (EAS) were exploited to beam news of a zombie apocalypse to American TVs: Montana Television Network’s regular programming was interrupted by warnings of the end of the world back in February.

Viewers of KRTC in Great Falls, Montana, were confronted by an on-air audio warning that "bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living". A scrolling text warning at the top of the screen naming various Montana counties as targets for the spoof announcement of doom, which sparked calls to the state's cops.
ZOMG! ZOMBIES!!11!!eleventy!!

All I want to know is where T-Bolt was back in February.

4 comments:

Dave H said...

Does this new system have a backup channel in case the internet goes out? Or do they just assume that if the 'net goes down civilization is screwed anyway?

lelnet said...

Root-privilege ssh keys in a firmware upgrade?

Root-privilege ssh keys _at all_???

Gah. The world is being run by morons.

Borepatch said...

lelnet, they need some braaaaains!

;-)

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Shhhhhhhh