Hacker sets off air raid sirens in Dallas for an hour and a half

In the night from Friday to Saturday, a hacker set off the city’s air raid sirens for just over an hour and a half. This consists of 156 sirens, which are used in extreme weather conditions or other emergencies.

This is reported by officials from Dallas, in the US state of Texas, to The New York Times. The alarm went off from 11:40 PM to 1:20 AM, causing confusion and panic among a section of the population. This also led to many calls to 911, where the wait was up to six minutes.

Dallas is not yet sure how exactly the attack was carried out. In any case, the attacker would not have had physical access to the sirens control system. ‘Remote access’ would also be excluded, although the exact definition of this is omitted in this situation. The only thing that is said about how the hack happened is that it was probably done wirelessly from close to the control center.

The alarms go off at intervals. After 90 seconds of sound, there is a short silence. “Every time we thought we’d solved the problem, the sirens went off again. Apparently we were constantly being hacked,” said a city spokesperson. In the end the problem was solved by shutting down the whole system. Dallas hopes to have the alarm system up and running without a vulnerability before the end of the weekend. The mayor states that it is important to improve the security of the system.

Hacks on infrastructure seem to be becoming more common. For example, in 2013, an American dam became the target of a hacking attempt. In addition, Ukraine’s energy grid was shut down by hackers for the second time last year.