This is a Test

Code Word “Hatefulness”: The Great EBS Scare of 1971
 
    “…[My] longest five minutes in radio.”
 
    --WOWO broadcaster Bob Sievers reflecting on what it was like to be on the air waiting to announce the end of the world.
 
On the morning of Saturday, February 20, 1971, Wayland S. Eberhardt, a civilian teletype operator, was going about his routine duties at the National Emergency Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. One of the functions of “the Mountain” during this era was to send out the weekly Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) test directive to the nation’s radio and television stations. They were, of course, also responsible for sending out the real warning. When stations received these messages they compared it against a card to determine what action to take.    
 
At 7:33 a.m. local time on that fateful Saturday, Mr. Eberhardt, a fifteen-year veteran of his job, fed the wrong tape into the transmitter and set off a panic that is remembered to this day. He was later quoted by the New York Times as saying “I can’t imagine how the hell I did it.” But he did.  
 
The teletype message that went over the wires read:
 
    MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: HATEFULNESS/HATEFULNESS

 
    THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION (EAN) DIRECTED BY THE PRESIDENT. NORMAL BROADCASTING WILL CEASE IMMEDIATELY. ALL STATIONS WILL BROADCAST EAN MESSAGE ONE PRECEDED BY THE ATTENTION SIGNAL, PER FCC RULES. ONLY STATIONS HOLDING NDEA MAY STAY ON AIR IN ACCORD WITH THEIR STATE EBS PLAN.

 
    BROADCAST EAN MESSAGE ONE.

 
    MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: HATEFULNESS/HATEFULNESS

 
    20 FEB

 
http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2010/09/cod...scare.html
 
https://youtu.be/Yu4r79l8P8I
 
https://youtu.be/Yu4r79l8P8I

The message authenticator leads me to believe that it was a 'real' test of sorts. Like the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' broadcast. 

 

The message authenticator leads me to believe that it was a 'real' test of sorts. Like the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' broadcast. 

 

 

The article says it was a simple mistake made by a man in Cheyenne mountain. Seems the tapes were all together and he used the wrong one.

The article says it was a simple mistake made by a man in Cheyenne mountain. Seems the tapes were all together and he used the wrong one.

 

What if someone pushes the wrong button and the whole internet goes down?

What if someone pushes the wrong button and the whole internet goes down?

 



 

Wait, was that a system shock?

Smart TVs are vulnerable to 'red button' hacking
 
The exploit, referred to as a "red button attack" is a "man in the middle" exploit, but rather than targeting data transfer over IP, it intercepts the television signal from the TV broadcaster.
 
At its simplest the attack, which could, for example, be the result of a drone carrying a counterfeit signal as it passes overhead, might spam the user with advertisements, but at worst, its payload could be used to hack devices, allowing other more serious malware to be installed
 
He warned that the danger is not limited to TV broadcast signals, adding, "Smart fridges, garage doors, car entertainment systems and electricity meters are all examples of new technology that all benefit from internet connectivity, but the extension of technology in this way also brings the possibility of more cyber-attacks."
 
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news...on-hacking
 
 

EAS Alerts and the Zombie Apocalypse Make Skynet a Reality
 
For many years, the EAS system, as well as its predecessor, the Emergency Broadcast System, operated by having a number of primary broadcast stations connected to governmental agencies through a closed network (typically over telephone lines). When an alert was sent to these primary stations, they would broadcast the alert, which would then be picked up and aired by stations monitoring the signal of the primary station, and in turn, by other stations monitoring those secondary stations. This created a daisy chain in which an announcement over one station quickly spread to stations throughout the alert area.
 
The highly automated nature of EAS was demonstrated yet again this week, when a Wisconsin radio station’s morning show disc jockeys played a tape of the zombie EAS alert, including the digital tone. The result was–you guessed it–the alert being automatically rebroadcast over at least one local television station whose EAS equipment was activated by the digital EAS tone.
 
So the good news is that we are well along in the development of an automated emergency alert system that can spread emergency information to most Americans in a matter of minutes. The bad news is that by putting the system almost entirely under the control of “the machines” (a Terminator term), the moderating effect of human involvement is greatly limited. In addition, by connecting this equipment through the Internet, we have expanded the ubiquity of the system, but at the cost of making every EAS Participant’s equipment, whether in Michigan, Montana, or elsewhere, readily accessible to every miscreant in the world with an Internet connection.
 
Thus, we are perfecting an automated response system that operates most efficiently without human involvement, while creating opportunities for control of that system (or at least portions of it) to fall into the hands of those who do not have our best interests at heart. In other words, Skynet is now a reality. This Skynet does not, thankfully, have the power to initiate nuclear launches, but it certainly does have the capability to launch public panic. A more realistic alert than a zombie attack could cause immense confusion and harm, particularly where the false message is being reinforced by identical EAS alerts on every source of information available, whether it be broadcast, cable, satellite, or smartphone.
 
http://www.commlawcenter.com/2013/02/by-...k-eas.html
 

 

Wait, was that a system shock?

 

  :GrinNod1:

 

  :GrinNod1:

 

 



 

Just one of those short sharp shocks...