Hackers raised fake tornado alarms in two Texas towns

Hackers took control of the emergency tornado alarms in Texas causing the panic, it has happened on March 12th, at around 2:30 a.m.,

On March 12th, at around 2:30 a.m. in two towns in Texas (the DeSoto and Lancaster areas) hackers took control of the emergency tornado alarms causing the panic among residents.

The alarms repeatedly went on and off until 4:00 a.m., when authorities regained their control.

The areas interested by the incident were hit by tornadoes several times in the past, for this reason, the authorities build an emergency tornado alarm system.

Every time people hear the emergency tornado alarms need to follow specific procedures to protect themselves against the natural disaster.

The hackers raised at least 30 alarms, twenty of them were raised in Lancaster and the rest in DeSoto.

The systems remained offline until Monday 17th March, fortunately, there were no imminent risks of tornados in that period.

The police are investigating the intrusion in the alarm systems of the two towns, the authorities will be intransigent with those who have breached into a critical system on which human lives may depend,

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – emergency tornado alarms, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.