A public service announcement
From Great Falls, Montana television station
KRTV:
Bogus emergency alert message transmitted
Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that there was an emergency in several Montana counties.
This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency.
Our engineers are investigating to determine what happened and if it affected other media outlets.
A tip of the hat for the link to Rawlsian at
Slashdot. They also provide the backstory:
Great Falls, Montana, television station KRTC issued a denial of an Emergency Alert System report that 'dead bodies are rising from their graves.' The denial surmises that 'someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System...This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency.'
Got my Zombie-Killah stashed in the house so zero problems here...
The comments at the Slashdot site were uniform in saying that a hack about flood warnings would be malicious but that this was a pure white-hat prank. Fun with zero consequences and demonstrating a vulnerability that needs to be patched stat!
Posted by DaveH at February 11, 2013 9:06 PM