CybersecurityAttackers can make it impossible to dial 911
It’s not often that any one of us needs to dial 911, but we know how important it is for it to work when one needs it. It is critical that 911 services always be available – both for the practicality of responding to emergencies, and to give people peace of mind. But a new type of attack has emerged that can knock out 911 access. These attacks can create extremely serious repercussions for public safety.
It’s not often that any one of us needs to dial 911, but we know how important it is for it to work when one needs it. It is critical that 911 services always be available – both for the practicality of responding to emergencies, and to give people peace of mind. But a new type of attack has emerged that can knock out 911 access – our research explains how these attacks occur as a result of the system’s vulnerabilities. We show these attacks can create extremely serious repercussions for public safety.
In recent years, people have become more aware of a type of cyberattack called “denial-of-service,” in which websites are flooded with traffic – often generated by many computers hijacked by a hacker and acting in concert with each other. This happens all the time, and has affected traffic to financial institutions, entertainment companies, government agencies and even key internet routing services.
A similar attack is possible on 911 call centers. In October, what appears to be the first such attack launched from a smartphone happened in Arizona. An 18-year-old hacker was arrested on charges that he conducted a telephone denial-of-service attack on a local 911 service. If we are to prevent this from happening in more places, we need to understand how 911 systems work, and where the weaknesses lie, both in technology and policy.
Understanding denial of service
Computer networks have capacity limits – they can handle only so much traffic, so many connections, at one time. If they get overloaded, new connections can’t get through. The same thing happens with phone lines – which are mostly computer network connections anyway.
So if an attacker can manage to tie up all the available connections with malicious traffic, no legitimate information – like regular people browsing a website, or calling 911 in a real emergency – can make it through.
This type of attack is most often done by spreading malware to a great many computers, infecting them so that they can be controlled remotely. Smartphones, which are after all just very small computers, can also be hijacked in this way. Then the attacker can tell them to inundate a particular site or phone number with traffic, effectively taking it offline.
