Hijacking Radio and TV Stations?

We heard from FEMA late today about our report into security vulnerabilities of the Emergency Alert System:  

"FEMA takes any potential threats seriously and we evaluate all such claims to determine their validity.  The Emergency Alert System already has adequate safety and security measures in place to ensure that it will only be used by appropriate officials as a way to communicate with the American people in the event of a real emergency."

We interviewed a self-described hacker who wrote a software program to mimic the squawks and tones that launch the EAS system.  He has researched how to "hijack radio and tv stations", how to use the EAS system to send his own message.  He says he has given the plan to the group Anonymous, which has been responsible for denial of service attacks, Twitter hacks, and promoting the Occupy movement.

As I said on the air today, the plan is based on information published by the government online.  The technology is out there -- I thought it was important to know what Anonymous could be up to next.  Here's their website, if you'd like to take a look.

By the way, I forgot how great the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" broadcast was.  Turn out the lights and listen to this, when you get a chance.

Comments

[Possum Hunter]

This is just lovely and just another reason I say to get rid of EAS Completely.

[Jake]

EAS is supposed to be replaced by a system that will be internet connected and odds are even worse. IPAWS which uses XCAP was supposed to be up 6 months ago then Sept 30 and now a year from now. Based on the FEMA test of the new system EAS seemed to still be used for the TV part of it.

EBS, 1960s tech, had at least code words to validate the message (although it took hours to relay a message nationally because it was manual). EAS replaced that in the 1990s and the authentication went away. That is part of the problem.

Jake - one from the interview

[Kyle]

The technology to hijack EAS or even the old EBS has existed since the outset of each of these systems. There have been several reported cases where this has been done, but the practicalities of doing it make such things very rare events, even on the local level. While possible, hijacking EAS on a national or regional level would be harder to do and would be a pretty short lived effort followed by a long rest in prison.

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Thanks you for your support, all the information is just what i need.

[hmmm]

Kyle: do you have any examples of a "long rest in prison" for any of the prior times someone did send unauthorized messages via EAS?

Do you have a statute handy that details what the punishment is for doing this?

Do you know that the network auto replicates messages and that it is actually not that difficult to get it to replicate your message, its just a matter of transmitting on the right frqeuency at the right location to make that happen. Not very hard and no more difficult than doing it for a single station.

[Anonymoose420]

I would like to state that there never was a plan to use this code. As I stated in emails to Dan and on video that got edited out, I got bored, I wrote code. It took me about 2 hours to research the spec and write the code. I tweeted the pastebin url of the code. Some people in Anonymous were aware of the code, there were overt statements of not using it because it was not a viable method of protest.

Again, there never was a plan to use it. No plan can be produced nor can any emails or video footage to that effect however statements to the contrary can be.

The original intent of the story was to show that Anonymous does not break everything they can but rather they reject things that are not deemed viable methods of protest. Those are claims that several of the arrested Anonymous participants have made in the local area to ABC7.

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