FW: Montana EAS hacked
Many have already seen this, but forwarding in case some haven’t… plus some sound advice from Richard Rudman (California LECC vice-chair) to our LA County EAS participants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc60XPCXrh8&feature=youtu.be
Montana station’s EAS hacked — alert warns of zombie attack.
In a disturbing breach of security, the details of which aren’t entirely known, a Montana television station says hackers broke into their Emergency Alert
System yesterday. Viewers of Cordillera Communications’ KRTV-TV, Great Falls were warned that “dead bodies are rising from their graves” and that they were “attacking the living.” It went on to tell people not to “approach or apprehend these bodies as they
are extremely dangerous.” At least four calls to police were logged. In a statement KRTV-TV says the message didn’t come from inside the station and it blames “hackers” for getting the bogus message on the air. “Our engineers our looking into the origin of
the alert to make sure a similar occurrence does not happen again,” the station says. It’s not clear if any other stations were hacked or also aired the fake EAS message.
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Lark Hadley
LA County EAS LECC
From:
la_lecc@PROTECTED [mailto:la_lecc@PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Richard Rudman
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 11:35 AM
To: la_lecc@PROTECTED
Subject: Re: Montana EAS hacked
This and other accounts have been all over the lists today.
Here are some simple things everyone should do now to make sure they will not be hit by this kind of attack, or get themselves in trouble.
1. Make sure that the default factory passwords for the web interfaces for their EAS boxes have been changed to strong passwords.
There is a great password strength checker at: [ https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm ] Highly recommended by Leo LaPorte and other IT experts.
2. Also, no EAS devices should be connected directly to the Internet. Just like any internet device, it should be behind a NAT router with a firewall. Low end ones that provide adequate protection are available starting around $50.
3. Also, remind news departments not to relay stories about this that include actual EAS header codes and attention signals. Some stations have done this already. That's illegal.
My best advice is, "Always practice safe Internet!"
Richard
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