Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowIf you live in the US, you've heard the tone before: a staccato series of beeps followed by an oddly neutral voice disclosing any number of warnings or disasters. This is known as the Emergency Alert System. In the event of an emergency, this system can save lives by immediately getting information out to the public ... but what happens if someone hacks it? How easy is it do so?
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh, let's open this way.
Uh.
How do you guys feel about the emergency alert system in the United States? I personally dig it. I think it's a cool thing.
This is only a test, you guys, This is only a test. It's cool, man.
It's sort of like, uh uh, it's like an international or a national firearm. Like I guess if we grow up experiencing probably more fire drills in school than actual you know, emergencies, and then we've probably all experienced more tests of the emergency broadcasting system than actual necessary uses of it.
But it's good to have it there in the back pocket, you know.
Yeah, And it's better that their test, you know, it's unsent that most of what we hear there are tests.
Yeah, not too many invasions of the country. Yet a couple of tornadoes, a couple of you know, one hundred tornadoes, which are it's important to have this kind of thing available. Well, we'll get into the reasons, but man, the history of this thing, the reason why I got put in place is ish.
Yeah, and it's this system is similar to the Amber Alert for missing persons, which should be you know, common knowledge to most folks in the US. It's meant to educate and protect the public, to arm them with information. It's one of those thinking about this. It's one of those rare things that pretty much everyone in government and private industry agree on. Let's try to keep people from dying in disasters. No one wants another hurricane Katrina, for example, or you shouldn't.
Oh no, Well, it requires such a commitment, such a buy in from everybody, right, Like I mean, I know it's the law, but you know, when you get that Amber alert, you get it on your phone, you get it on the rate, you get it everywhere, and it has to buy its very nature, has to have one hundred percent adherence.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
And for most Americans, the emergency alert system or street name EAS is an infrequent cameo in your life. Imagine you're listening to the radio in your car, maybe you have local TV on in the background, you're checking your phone. You receive a text from the system, and now that you have this information, you are more likely to survive dangerous events so long as the system is working, so long as the information is real, so long the whole thing hasn't been hacked. Here are the facts. All right, we're kind of describing it, and it's a familiar thing again, But for people who are not listening from the United States, who may have their own equivalent warning system, how would we describe the EAS.
Well, it's a way for the United States government to interrupt broadcasting basically with an emergency message of any sort.
Right.
It's mostly for radio and television, at least back in the day. That's how it was developed. Right, So, if anyone was listening to something or watching something, the system was a tool basically for the president himself or herself to jump on and say, hey, everybody, we got to watch out for this thing.
And it's it's triggered, you know, I mean, it's we'll get more into it. But we actually, as the employee of a large broadcast company. We are all required to take training courses periodically around the emergency alert system, how to use it, how it's used, its history, and most importantly, how to not accidentally trigger it, because that can.
Be done right.
As a result, we've been directed not to play this the actual tone, which should be familiar to everybody. We can describe it for you. It should only be used for testing, educational, or actual emergency purposes. The best way to describe it going to the primary sources is, as Matt pointed out, it's back in the day, it was primarily for radio and TV broadcasters. Now it'll be for satellite operators, wireless cable systems. Also you know, mobile phones or smartphones. And the whole goal is to, at the most extreme version, provide the President of the United States the capability to address the entirety of the American people within ten minutes during a national emergency, which is a heck of a heck of a time window and very impressive to do this, I mean, with so many moving parts.
Whereas an amberiller it might be more regionalized or even localized, the eas is nationalized.
And potentially potentially one hundred percent.
And it's so interesting because, you know, Matt, you pointed out that it is something that has a background in just you know, old school broadcast methods like TV and radio. Therefore too when you hear that test, I swear I almost guarantee the voice of that guy you hear was probably recorded back in the fifties and they're still using the same one just because it's just always I mean, he sees like this is a touch of the emergency.
I swear that's gotta be vintage day.
That has to be well, you save money, oh yeah, but it's also just in place. It's probably it's just like whatever systems that are in place, server rooms, whatever might be. It's got to be more low tech than that. And this is just what's in there.
Well.
But with the new system, you can upload any MP three that's right through the system, right which which plays into you know, the later discussions in this episode about what happens if somebody takes over. I just want to point out we're talking about it as a national system, but can also be localized. The only way I've ever personally experienced it is through a weather alert when the when naa National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration issues an alert that's very localized to like a town or a region of a state, and within the United States, that says, hey, there has been a tornado warning in your area, or there's you know, there's a tornado watch happening right now.
Yeah.
Yeah, Because there's a triumvirate of agencies taking taking helm of this in some way. It is true. Interesting fact if you want to be real fun at a party. The EAS is theoretically deployable on a nationwide level. However, the President has so far fingers crossed, knock on wood, not done that. So you're much more likely to hear this on a regional or local level through state or territorial or tribal authorities. And this is a good thing. That's why the voices might sound a little bit different when they get to the details of the thing versus the announced you know, the ubiquitous tone of the test. The triumvira here is FEMA, the disaster guys, and then they team up with the FCC, the communications gang, and then as previously mentioned a moment ago, Noah, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Without getting too into the weeds, FEMA maintains the system. NOAH, through their National Weather Service branch, is responsible for most of the alerts that get sent out way or another, and the FCC's role is to set the standards for the networks participating to kind of determine the flow of traffic right in the order of operations. Everybody works together to make sure this thing comes into play when we need it. And that is why we hear the test. You know. It's just like how the military has to do drills all the time so that when they're in an actual combat situation they know what to do and it is familiar. That's the whole points. That's why you hear this at the weirdest times. It's a little cameo in your life.
Yeah. Well, and I remember growing up when the TV was on way more frequently actually on cable or something. It would be a specific cable provider that would run a test or you.
Know, or like a CBS affiliate, NBC affiliate.
Even way back then. It would be on that level of the actual broadcaster that was doing it rather than the company that sends the entire of the cable signal to you.
And I want to go back to the point about the training, because this is something a couple of us we're talking about off air before we rolled. My favorite part about that kind of annual training is imagining how bad things would have to get, like how far civilization and chains of command would have to collapse for some g man to hit me up and say, hey, podcast guy, you've got to warn everyone about the tornado in Oklahoma, the super Tornento. It would have to be a shark tornado at that point, Like how many It's kind of like when you think of how many people in government would have to be out of play for, you know, the mayor of a specific state to become commander in chief.
It is interesting, though, how this sort of loses its teeth a little bit with the advent of more on demand services, you know, like podcasting. It'd be damn it would be impossible to implement that in a podcast because people are getting the thing. It's on their system, you know, disconnected from the Internet potentially, and they're listening to it, consuming it whenever they want. And such is the case too with like any kind of YouTube. And I don't know, like I'm interested to know is there a future proofing of this or is there some kind of modern version that could break into Internet streams.
I don't know the logistics so that would work.
Honestly, the best solution, which is imperfect, the best solution deployed and we'll get to this in just a couple of minutes, is the advent of cell phone networks. I'm holding up a phone. It's the advent of those issuing the warnings via text because of course, not everybody has the radio on all the time. In a world where a ton of people aren't watching you know, old rabbit e or broadcast TV, we have to wonder how effective this could be. We need people to know about natural disasters, fires, floods, high winds, hazardous materials, ghastly, you know what I mean. Your local DuPont factory explodes and the cloud is moving north northeast. The people there might not be listening to the radio, so it's the fastest way to get to them is statistically through the use of phones, since most people have those.
Do you guys remember October of last year? I know, was it October? It was last year? There was a nationwide test with this stuff, specifically to test out the new cell phone alerts with the EAS and it was a big deal.
You made the news. I mean it was a like an event, right.
Yeah, it was like everybody needs to be aware that this is a test, because.
There were months in advance.
Yeah, they were afraid that there would be, you know, at least small pockets of us that would freak the heck out, even though it says on it it's a test. Just that sound alone, and just that I think we've been primed since childhood, at least I know I have been that that sound. It means there is real stuff going down right now.
I'm actually really anxious to talk to my kid about this because I would hazard a guess that they are not aware of this system or that sound at all.
That I really do bet that's the case.
Well, if they have a phone, they're going to learn about it pretty quickly.
Man's surely sure, and that you know.
But it's also just it hits you a little different than what you're talking about, Matt, that almost nostalgic quality that we attached to it, you know, left of this is serious business, guys.
What the whole idea though, is uh is noble right if ambitionious? The idea that we could give the public time to get to higher ground in a tsunami event, or find shelter from something really fast and unpredictable like a tornado. This system, for all its imperfections, has saved lives, and it's a critical piece of infrastructure. It's weird to think that this did not This was not always a thing in the United States. It came after the advent of radio technology and other mass communication platforms. Noah's Weather Bureau didn't give the public a heads up about severe weather warnings until nineteen fifty, and it was kind of catch twenty two Joseph Heller esque because before then, the government boffin thinking was, if we issue these emergency alerts, we could lead to we could accidentally create widespread panic, not the band, we could make false reports. We could accidentally, with the best of intentions, create a disaster when there wasn't really one. So they were very conscious, just as so this up. They're very conscious that the power to address so many people at once could be incredibly dangerous.
It is the're on hands where it to fall into them.
You know, Well, let's talk about that date, that year, nineteen fifty. Why do we think the United States decided it needed this system in nineteen fifty. Gotta say, not this specific date, but what happened just before nineteen fifty, just a couple of years before. Oh, I don't know, the atomic bomb?
Yeah, right, So, like say, this is when you get a lot of duck and cover like videos and things like that.
This is of that.
Era because there's a real fear that well, hey, if we can do this to a country where all you know, in Japan, where in these two cities, like we gave them fair warning with pamphlets or whatever, but we still, you know, somewhat glassified quite a large swath of two cities. What if that happens to us somewhere? How how are we gonna let people know? Right?
Did you just say glassified?
I'm not. I'm sorry, I'm that's to.
No, I never heard that. I've never heard that. I think it's a I've never heard it before. I think it's very appropriate.
I just that's ye atomized, sure, lay waste, yes, left no stone standing on another stone, terrified. I mean, yeah, that's I think that is the terrifying genesis of the change in thinking in governance there at least in the US. And the better minds won the day we could say, because by nineteen fifty one, after Noah went public with publishing these available severe weather warnings, radio stations on the AM band would carry broadcasts during disasters or other emergencies. So, to MAT's point, completely correct. In my opinion, it's a it's a Cold War thing, and unlike a lot of other Cold War legacies, this was a good thing.
Yeah, very good thing. Thank goodness for the EAS.
Yeah, which was started as the EBS Emergency Broadcast System.
That's how I remember you're hearing in nineteen sixty three, Emergency Broadcast System.
Yeah, because they used it until nineteen ninety seven. The Emergency Alert System came in in nineteen ninety seven. Why did it switch? Well, if we're looking for historical precedent, why not the nineteen ninety six Olympics. I'm kidding, that's not true, but it sounds kind of plausible.
Wow. Yeah, yeah, if you don't.
Think about it, it sounds plausible.
Sure, sure, But it was mostly because that's around the same time that I got my first cell phone, right, so they must have been changing things up to noting that they were now cellular networks coming out.
Yeah, yeah, to broaden the scope a bit. I think that's quite astute. And then twenty twelve the all the weird conspiracies about the Mayan calendar were incorrect, and Mayan people have been saying that forever, but because the world didn't end in twenty twelve, we see the rollout of the text the emergence the wireless emergency alerts or weas, and.
They were sending texts all the way back in twenty twelve.
Yes, ah, I don't know.
How, I'm like missed out. I don't I have no recollection of that occurring.
I think it was widely adopted, like in terms of like a you know, regularly used thing. But I do remember early texts that would come from say your cell phone provider telling you things about your bill or whatever, and it was almost like what is this novelty thing?
Because it was hard to input data into those.
You had to use the alpha numeric kind of like one two three kind of like system, and it was just a little bit tricky with early little Nokia brickfallons. That's I do remember it as far back as then as it being a capability.
But we're talking about twenty twelve, right, like that's when this wireless thing came in where so they would actually send emergency information via text message to you.
Yeah. In addition, started with yeah cell phones in New Mexico in response to flooding twelve and it's.
You know, we as IBB's ease.
This is a lot of these are a lot of acronyms, but again they're important to understanding tonight's episode because it is an invisible infrastructure empire. But it's even though it's invisible and intangible, it's just as crucial as roads, bridges, electricity, drinking water, all the hits and sadly, just like so many other kinds of infrastructure, as we'll find this evening, the emergency alert system may be imperiled because what would happen if someone hacked it.
We'll talk about just that after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. It could be an absolute utter catastrophe if someone was able to compromise a system this powerful. On the national level, shore that's possibly existential, but even on the regional or local level, this could really put a monkey wrench in things.
Well, yeah, imagine if everybody and let's just say a super small town, a couple thousand people, Imagine if everybody in that small town gets alerted that there's what do we say, guys, not a weather emergency, something more out there UFO, a UFOs landed in the middle of the town, right, And well, if that panic starts to set in, even with a couple thousand people, we know what that can do, like to the psychology of a group of people, right, and the dangerous situation they would all be in.
Yeah, if you hacked any level of this, you would remove a foundational piece of the safety net for the American public, and you would remove their ability to shelter from or escape from a fast event like a tornado. People would die if you prevented this. So in the other scenario, the one I think you're referencing there, meta, you could leverage some aspect of the eas to issue fake or misleading warnings. You could create a disaster as a distraction. It's like a weaponized version of that old canard or fake story about Orson Wells and the War of the World's broadcast. We all heard that story, right, and hopefully we all know it's not true. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a quick background.
It was like a radio play that was produced by Orson Wells's Radio Theater Company, and it was just so damn good and at least for the time, and it was not I guess, I mean it.
Was caveat it. If I'm not mistaken, Ben.
They certainly did, but people tuned in halfway a lot of times it didn't hear the opening sort of qualifier that this was just a you know play, And a lot of people really did think that we were being this is like a real news broadcast and we were being you know, invaded by alien forces.
Yeah, some percentage of people believe that, but if we were Snoop, we would say it was mostly false. But the thing is it teaches us a real, an actual and plausible tactic. I guess we'll add one more scenario here. If you cut it off, you would you would be able to remove public knowledge of man made disasters as well, such as large scale attacks, terrorist incursions. Luckily, the US has super creepy eyes and ears all over the place, on the ground, the sea, the heavens, so there are redundant systems that will let the government know when a missile launches and so forth. But if you hack the eas, then the government might know about these things. But the public might not so very very dangerous water. Well, it's like you got too flip size kind of. You got the boy who cried wolf scenario, which is dangerous in and of itself, and then you have the like cutting it off entirely scenario, which is dangerous in a different way.
Yeah, I think that's really scary to me, the thought of it could just not function when I personally or my family needs it to function. And have you guys ever been in a scenario where you've been at your house or you've been somewhere and you were unaware that there was going to be a severe storm and you for some reason were just oblivious to like what the sky was doing and what the clouds were doing, and the darkness or whatever it was, and then all of a sudden, you find yourself in the middle of a very severe weather event like that has happened to Melickers. Yeah, And I I don't know. I don't know if it's just if it's too out there, but the fear I know that I experienced in those moments, especially because I had a very young child at the time, just like what do I do? Oh God, what do I do? And when the panic sets in it's very difficult to act in that cool headed manner that you may actually need to have when there's an emergency situation.
Little heads up goes a long way.
Yeah, And if I was paying attention and I'd gotten an alert or something, then I feel like I would have at least handled myself better than I did. I don't know. I think removing it is really scarier than I thought it would be.
Yeah, I mean, also this reminds me everybody check out the go Bag episode. We know it's not for everybody, but just like people train with the eas improv is cool, but preparation and prepared responses. Preparation and practice responses, I should say, are your best bet in things like this. What are you going to do when the grocery stores close their doors right and the water doesn't come out of the faucets. It's okay to look nuts nine times if the tenth time it's the correct move totally.
And you know, while we certainly have issues where weather conditions can be very very serious here in the United States, you know, things like you know, hurricanes and tornadoes and all of that stuff. In Japan and in countries like that, I mean tsunamis are a serious issue, and so I was just looking up a little bit about the Japanese version of this technology, and they have kind of figured it in to where you will get an alert on your computer as well, like it's all tied in, whereas we're a little behind the curve here unless we've missed something and there's been an update.
But I don't think that's the case.
The jay alert system is much more robust than this what we have here.
In the States.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. I've experienced it, and you can go You can make an argument that there's more of a unified approach to it because the US system has so many moving parts. Very true, you know so. And also the legislation here does take a while to catch up. This is this is where we get to a crazier part. This all might sounds a little alarmist right now. If you're hearing this in a safe place and you look outside and you say, well, it's kind of hot, but it looks like a nice day for the day walkers out there, we have to step back and ask ourselves, could any of these events actually occur? Yes, And the people who are concerned about this are not just fringe wing nuts, you know on the chans somewhere. They're experts worried about this, and they have precedent. Do we want to talk? Oh gosh, all right. In February twenty thirteen, let's just do it this way. TV stations in multiple states Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, and then later a couple others encountered a pretty hilarious prank with profoundly disturbing implications. Is it okay if we play the clip? Mosty okay with you guys. We'll play just the first part. Okay, folks, here it is. We're only going to play part of this so that this does not get mistaken for an actual emergency alert.
But here we go.
This is KRTV out of Montana, a local CBS affiliate. In twenty thirteen. February twenty thirteen.
Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking their living. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies, as they are considered extremely dangerous.
I repeat.
Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies, as they are considered extremely dangerous. This station will now sees transmission, so please use your battery power radio tune into nine twenty am for formation.
So what how would you feel if you heard that over a pancake commercial? By the way, in Montana.
If it's interrupting pancakes, I mean, we're in serious trouble here as far as I'm concerned.
Well, it was was it? Was it the news or was it a full on infomercial that was happening?
This was this was a series of advertisements, okay, in the midst of something called the Steve Wilco Show.
Okay, got You, Got You? So it's an advertising block inside one of their television shows. Yeah, no, I mean that's pretty horrifying. I think the language that was used by the person speaking there made it feel very genuine, right, except for, you know, the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves, which you're just like, nah, that what But the well, the response basically the person is telling you to do right, keep your radio, tune into the station for alerts, don't go near the bodies. It sounded genuine.
Ugh, there's one like one forensic misstep or structural misstep the speaker makes. They use the first person tense, they say I at some point, which you're not supposed to. Oh really, But that's that's the thing a lot of people will miss. I didn't clock it until listening through a few times.
But yeah, you're right.
Like the fact that it has the actual emergency tone, right, the fact that there are specific, clear instructions, calls to action, next steps. This does feel even for skeptical people, right, A lot of folks would understandably have one of those oh crap, really moments.
Do we know if that person got arrested and like find hundreds of thousands of not millions of dollars? Because they I feel like I could identify that person's voice. It was very I mean, is yeah, you would recognize that person if they stood in fornt of even talked.
I think yeah, as far as we know, they have not been apprehended, and they hit multiple places over multiple days. We also know I was surprised to find that at least at the time, the fine for this kind of thing that we call a broadcast signal intrusion was up to a year in jail and one thousand dollars.
One thousand dollars.
That's it, I know, right, that's.
So crazy because in our FCC training we learned that there was some radio show that played this the official eas tone and all of that bringing stuff, and then they could find hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a lot of money.
But is that like you're talking about for an individual ben for this was my understanding here at the time.
God these intrusions, so they probably, I mean, as a result of this, obviously a lot of things changed because someone had the proof of concept and said, hey, we can convince small towns everywhere or regions of states that dead are rising from the grave. And yeah, that's part of why I think so many media companies clamped down on this stuff. The stations evolved all very quickly, to their credit, launched into damage control and they said, look, hey, if anybody's wondering dead people are still dead. That part hasn't changed. We're sorry there was an interruption in the programming. We're figuring out what's going to happen after this, and this also I think calls to mind other infamous signal intrusions like the Max Headroom event in nineteen eighty seven that we covered in depth previously, or the Captain Midnight thing where he took over HBO for a second.
Mm hmm.
Let's get as. I just wanted a note here. I didn't know the FBI would get involved if you try and hijack the emergency broadcast system like that or the EA.
It makes sense, though, right, because you're like crust, I mean, it's it's uh, it's federal. You know, it's a federal system. You're doing something that affects things across state lines, you know, literally every potentially every state line.
Uh yeah, I mean I.
Didn't know that either, wouldn't necessarily immediately thought that, but when you say it out loud, it does kind of make sense in its own way, right.
Well. Yeah, but in the case we just talked about, that was one tiny little station in Great Falls, Montana, right where that broadcast alert went through with that fake one, But the FBI just immediately was on the case.
Yeah, It's like how it's a federal crime to mess with the mail.
Oh yeah, I guess that's true.
Yeah, and you know they're they're not playing. And also a lot of people got caught out because they learned that they were not as safe as they thought they were. And objectively, for a lot of people, probably a lot of our longtime listeners who happened to see this, it's kind of hilarious, right, No, because no one got killed spoiler, No one got killed by the undead, and as far as we know, no one died in some sort of ensuing panic. But this was a shot across the bow of broadcasting infrastructure, and later analysis seemed to find that the most mundane possible reason for this was indeed the cause. The head of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters said, here's what happened. TV stations bought this equipment for these emergency systems, and that equipment, like so many electronics who buy even today, came with default passwords. And the folks who were setting this up at their local stations just didn't change the default passwords. That's what the trade group said. You just kept the password admin for admin one, two, three four, And you were like, all right, that's fine, I got other stuff to do.
That's so funny. That's the exact problem that all of these emergency road signs are having, where every all of the you know, Department of Transportation.
Ones with the texts, yeah, the little you.
Know with it's not scrolling texts. They like display some text then blips out, then displays some more texts and that thing. And those systems, almost all of them have a little panel in the back that you can access that usually isn't locked, and they've got a default password and anybody can walk up there at any time and just change the thing and say, oh, zombies ahead.
It's like, how it's so terrifyingly easy to hack traffic lights in most of America. It's because it's like it's a why would you situation?
I didn't know that you can just open a panel somewhere and just hack them.
Well, there's a very maybe A mentioned this.
There's a very specific episode of mcguyver where he yeah, it's a panel, like it's like a at least back in the eighties or whatever, it was like a box that if you break into, there's like circuit boards and he kind of you know, switched some jumpers or whatever. You know. The mcguiver, but he did it as a way of creating a diversion, but it actually could have potentially caused a traffic bile up, but could have killed in a peoples. That always really sketched me out about mcguiver.
Oh my gosh, we're going somewhere with this, folks. Because right now, in a lot of places, the traffic lights are are wirelessly networked, which is a convenience. But with that convenience comes the opportunity for Shenanigans. University of Michigan researchers back in twenty fourteen found that you could with a simple laptop, nothing like no NSA or NRO black box stuff, with a regular, publicly available laptop, you could hack traffic light networks. And you see this in The Italian Job. You see this in other films, right, and I guess you see it in video games too, right.
I think it was in some of those.
Yeah there, well there, What is that video game where it's specifically about hacking the entire city and everybody in it? There's Camp Watch Dogs. Yeah, that's the one. That's what I'm thinking about.
Okay, I thought that was a good game. I don't think I ever finished it.
I never played it, but I remember seeing lots and lots of promo for it.
That's right, they spent a lot of money on the promo.
And then the thing is these trade groups. It feels like they're acting in good faith, but we could also wonder whether they're trying to assign blame to someone else in this system of many moving parts. Are they saying, oh, it's the employees who just put in admin or didn't change their default password. Other people disagreed. Security firms. One that got quoted a lot at the time, a group called io Active. They said, look, it's deeper than the passwords. We found critical vulnerabilities in both the software and the hardware of all these stations across the United States. This means that just like hacking traffic lights, hackers could remotely compromise these devices, broadcast fake messages, potentially stop messages from going out if they were real. And then, I don't know, it gets weirder because they could also just go in and change the password, right, classic.
Hacker power move.
Yep. And this is we're still in twenty thirteen and immediately following that year, right because of this major thing which I improperly said was just from Montana, but it was Michigan, Montana and New Mexico. Sorry about that, guys, but it was a small station that was broadcasting out to a lot of places. So they're finding that in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. I'm assuming there are these vulnerabilities everywhere. So is there anything to do to change it? I'm assuming we made a lot of changes afterwards.
Yeah, yeah, hopefully. It kind of it put the burden on the individual stations, right, the individual outlets we want to shout out. Mike Davis, the chief research scientist of Bioactive at the time, he said something really scary in some twenty thirteen interviews. I think it was in well, let's start with the one right after this, like in February of twenty thirteen. He was talking to people various you know, security forms and news outlets that are more tech forward, and he said, look, here's the thing. Even after these attacks, I can go on Google Search, and just using Google, which was way better search system back then, I can easily find thirty different systems that can be hit the same way. Because if you don't change the default password, you can often find that default password online in a user manual makes things which trivializes the hacking exercise.
Yeah, somebody somewhere is going to post it. I remember seeing that quote in one of these articles. It was just said, if there is a default password for any piece of hardware, someone has posted it online.
Exactly.
Think about how much troubleshooting everyone does with all their hardware. I mean that back then. Nowadays there's a forum somewhere where somebody's like, oh, that's an easy fix. Just use the default password.
Go in type admin, do a quick reset. Yeah exactly. And this is something that remains scary today because the observations of these security experts would prove prescient. Similar tactics were shown in later attacks years after this. In February twenty seventeen, four years later, a radio station out of Winchester, Indiana got their emergency system hacked. Get this with the same tactics and the same frickin zombie apocalypse message. Really the same one. Someone waited four years and was just sort of snoopy duping around. Man, is the password still admin?
These guys?
Huh, yep, we got men. Do you guys? Have you guys watched any of the videos that you can find all of our social media where it's someone pranking like a family member with a very similar thing. It's mostly UAP and UFO invasion alien invasion stuff. But you can find videos where people have made very convincing looking pieces of news or something, or they've edited together an actual broadcast from news and then put in their own emergency about alien invasions. And it's mostly people our age or like ten years maybe, like parents and early grandparents who are getting getting hacked by their kids in pumps. Yeah, and Coast to Coast.
Doesn't take the call.
Yeah, they just said it to a cousin, a family member epic. You know, that's like an uncle or a dad joke, you know what I mean. And if you're just pranking one family member, who are we to interfere with your personal relationship. But if you're pranking like Montana, then you should kind of get in trouble.
Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal.
It's a big deal.
But also, you know, twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen talk about committing to the bit it gets. So we've we've given the funny part of this, but let's let's get to the even more dangerous part. Maybe after a word from our sponsors.
Let's do it all right.
They're further issues we talked. We had the question about the fallout of this right, the after what.
Do you do?
So the federal government came out made all these recommendations. The FCC did not, interestingly enough, mandate that everybody UH changed their passwords, but they strongly urged people to do so, which is weird. It's kind of like their signpost saying that if you go past this point, it's your fault.
I mean, we tried to tell you. We tried to tell you. That is so weird because I guess you couldn't. I mean, how do you enforce that mandate? You send an agent to every broadcasting you know, room everywhere that has a piece of equipment that can do.
This, And how do you justify the cost of that right? And how do you fight back against trade groups, private powerful private actors who say, you know, oh, come on, there's a one off. We got it. We sent an email.
Yeah, just tell them to do it.
We're good.
Yeah, that's the issue. The FCC also strongly recommends, even though we're being very careful with it, they strongly recommend never using those tones outside of genuine emergency alerts, testing or educational purposes, and that is a direct result of this twenty thirteen series of incidents. They also, let's see, they also said, oh, you know, update your software since things are increasingly connected online. But it was too late. The horses had left the barn. The hacker horses had left the broadcast barn, or something to that effect, and people did an update for years after the fact, because again it felt distant from them. Right, yes, I run a radio station, but I'm in Delaware. This stuff only happens in Montana.
Well yeah, and it was a one off thing, right, it was a weird, weird one off that happened. And that's weird. That's probably not gonna happen to us. Come on, that's like lightning striking kind of thing. Wait, that happens all the time. Hold on, hell ry.
Waiter. There's like a like a Broadway.
So I was like lightning striking again and again and again and again.
God, that's also a great oldie song. And shout out to the band Live because maybe, uh, maybe that's about the twenty thirteen incident before it happened, because I think they made the song beforehand. We found the culprit of the twenty thirteen the twenty thirteen hacks, we also found some terrible stuff that happened after this at that point about people not getting their s together are Palt Mike Davis, in a blog post a little bit after, just like in July twenty thirteen, said hey, remember how I told you, Just searching on Google found thirty different systems that can easily be hacked the same way or kinds of systems. He said, Well, in April of twenty thirteen, as we kept looking, we found two hundred and twenty two vulnerable systems, and then by July of that same year, we found four hundred and twelve. The numbers seem to be increasing rather than decreasing.
And these are devices that are now online essentially or accessible remotely, Because that is a big deal. If you could only access this emergency alert system via plugging into a machine or something that then goes out right, something that is offline completely, that's one thing, because then that means you've got an intruder on the you know, on the premises that's doing some actual hacking. It's if it's online, then you just got to get into the network.
Yeah, and then also we could argue that there is I don't think it's even an argument there's a clear and very strong incentive for that remote access because again, of that very short ten minute window.
What are you going to send somebody in to the studio within that ten minutes to set up the EAS system. That's probably not going to happen unless you've got a lighthouse situation where somebody lives above the building.
Or as always there there's someone always at the switch like nuclear operations sort. But that, yeah, that's the issue. Even in twenty twenty four, folks, we do not know for sure how many of these systems have been patched or fixed updated over the last ten years. We also don't know how many other new vulnerabilities may have arisen, and we know that this is a global thing. Broadcast signal intrusion is okay, ethics aside, I'll say it. It's fascinating. Who doesn't love a little pirate radio as it were? But we see similar instances I thought, I thought we particularly enjoy this one from nineteen seventy seven in the United Kingdom.
In the UK, someone took over Southern television, which is funny. I mean, of course, there's southern parts of the UK, but we disassociate here being from the south, and that's what southern is. It's a regional ITV broadcaster. And on the twenty sixth of November nineteen seventy seven, audio was broadcast over the evening News from a quote galactic overlord who warned humanity that they had a quote once again, but a.
Short time to live together in.
Peace, and then they will be turned into pieces by me, the galactic overlord.
Now I don't know.
This to me seems sort of like a carpai DM kind of thing. You know, It's like, hey, listen, we don't have that long together on this planets. We might as well spend it living in peace. But it also, you know, could be taken as a.
Threat just the fact that this person refer to themselves as an overlord. I mean, come on, that's not that's that's not.
There benev overlords. There can be you know, positive overlords.
So is it like what I'm just trying to figure out the org chart?
Are there.
Regular like surface lords, then there's a surface overlord, then there are like solar system lords, solar system overlords, thin galactic lords, thin galactic overlords.
I don't know, man, I just know there are underlings and overlords, you know, in the between, right?
Are there under lords?
Oh? Now that's a good question.
Check out a Weird Holes episode Mysterious Holds. Tell us if you yourself are at underlord. We know this as and maybe this is the crux. Here we end where it began. This has been a military tactic as well. Broadcast signal intrusion. The Nation of Israel swamped the signals from a Palestinian TV channel back in the day all mon Our TV to broadcast anti hamas propaganda. There were some Polish nerds, honestly, and I say we say that with great affection, they took over a TV broadcast in nineteen eighty four and they did it entirely as ideological actors. They were telling other people in Poland to boycott the national elections because they were corrupt. And that's a genuine danger, right. Honestly, the zombie thing's hilarious. The Max Headroom thing is hilarious. I guess technically we're supposed to tell you that both their criminal acts. So don't do it if you can avoid it, with understanding that you know you might be in a situation, but otherwise, you know, stick to your regularly schedule broadcast. I mean, what happens if an Internet savvy terrorist group gets a hold of part of these systems or god forbid, the entire shebang almost called it a skidadal.
That's the next level of this type of stuff.
We've talked about, you know, numerous times, the idea of you know, getting control of banking details or like records in terms of like you know, massive corporate collapse, you know, fight club type stuff, I guess, but that is where we're at in terms of like how the most havoc could be wrought without you know, having to set off a single bomb.
I don't know, guys. It feels like with our interconnectivity now and with social media, you'd have to you'd have to take that system down, and you'd have to take down most of the primary Internet service providers like simultaneously. And if you did that, then I think everybody is in a super vulnerable position. But otherwise they're gonna be alerts that go out just via you know, somebody making a post, right, But then is that taken seriously?
That's the thing, because you don't have to necessarily get all the way along the action spectrum of shutting stuff down, you could also contaminate the message. Both are herculean efforts. Honestly, like, it's not I don't think it's a thing that one super villain type person could do.
I think you would.
You would need to put together a team.
I think it would have to be a military action to really pull it off.
M M yeah.
I mean, and if it's a if it's a terrorist level action, it was probably it would probably be a proxy group of some other state actor, right, because that's those are the most powerful terrorist groups right now. And what happens then if the the other issue is what if the system itself becomes so compromised that the public starts to ignore these warnings. You don't get the full attention when that tone comes on, it becomes the broadcast that pride wolf every This is crucial because every misstep or compromise of the emergency alert system diminishes its effectiveness going forward in a measurable way. The whole point is to get your undivided attention, right. It's classic behavioralism, right, It's it's Pavlov's dog and the bell. It's supposed to make you clock in right, and it's supposed to give you clear information, instructions and in doing so potentially save your life. Diminishing that effectiveness is a feasible goal of asymmetric warfare. You can you can wage a war in a different way.
Now, it feels weird that we're talking about this now, guys, with the election coming up, with all the weirdness going on with both candidates, it feels more and more like we're going to get one of these alerts, but not for one of the reasons that we grew up, you know, learning we would get one of these alerts. It feels like there could be one for a legitimate.
Call that's coming from inside the house kind of one.
Yeah, I picture you like citizens as a faulty county. This is not a test. Be advised, totus. Joe Biden has consumed for margaritas at the day of and bust and his whereabouts are currently unknown. Do not approach seat shelter.
Geez, why, guys, that's really funny. I have the scenario in my head where something happens to the sitting current president right before the election or before you know the next president is officially in office and sworn in, and some weirdness goes down because both October surprise, Yeah, because it feels like both sides are so entrenched and willing to do anything to maintain or gain power again, and it is just I don't know it.
Well, it is a little liberating for it to be so kind of almost like we don't really like either side at this point.
So it's kind of like, I don't think we.
Are at the rest risk of pissing anybody off, particularly for having partisan opinions, because it's really just more about like, could we please preserve democracy?
Could we please? That would be great?
Could we please avoid civil war and Mad Max type scenarios that would be fantastic. Fascism, let's maybe avoid that one.
See, there's this weird thing and I want to get too political, But in a lot of that thinking, I'm noticing that a lot of people believe one side is the one that's going to maintain democracy.
Well, in my head, I know, you're right, you're right, you're right.
Basically there's it's when we we just talked about on Strange News, the the changes that just occurred with Scotus, with the Supreme Court, with the power of the president. So it's just feeling more and more like something's getting set up and we're not. We can't see the full picture right now, and it might not be the people that whatever, whatever team you're on, it might not be your team.
Well, the teams that are active, at least some of them, and this is proving conspiracy, are not the teams that you can vote for. Yeah, the idea of gently pushing people through propaganda is very real. It's more affordable now than ever. It's super hot in state craft because it's cheap and it works, you know what I mean.
Well, guys, we just did an entire episode on the system that the government alerts us if there's a problem. We just saw a couple of weeks ago, the system that's supposed to be US alerting that there's a problem. The nine to one to one system, the emergency services system in the United States went down, like in several major cities for and we're look, we're only talking about hours here, but for several hours, the nine to one to one system went down, which is a huge deal. And if we can't have that kind of emergency communication as a two way street at any time, I feel like I don't know. It genuinely freaks me out.
Guys.
This is why, you know, I agree fully with you, guys. This is why I think this is such a crucial episode, you know what I mean. Not every conspiracy involves the paranormal. Sometimes it's simply those who have power seeking more power, right or finding a more cost effective way to you know, for a lot of these bad faith actors, or these rival forces whatever you want to call them, terrorists state powers, they see themselves in a David versus Goliath's situation with the United States. By that means they prize and prioritize asymmetric warfare. It makes no sense to try to catch up with the US in building aircraft carriers. It is an unwinnable pursuit at this point, unless something really crazy goes wrong. You just spend a little bit less money figuring out how to kill the carriers. So if you can't attack the US physically on land, which geographic is quite difficult, then you grow domestic problems, and you can do that very affordably in any number of ways.
Well, and just imagine, oh god, I hate giving these kinds of scenarios could but this is what I see in my head. The nine to one one outage was in Massachusetts is only for two hours, right, And the official word from that, from the people who run that system said, oh no, it was a firewall that was enacted temporarily for two hours that prevented calls from coming in to our system, so nobody could call nine one one. Imagine in this asymmetrical warfare scenario where you're attacking the eas right in some way, disabling it or hacking it, you attack a localized nine to one one system, like in a city where whenever you wherever you go in no one can alert. Like how nobody has the local police station in their phone when many some people do, but not many people have that. Right, you call nine one one and there's an emergency, and if that doesn't go through, as there's an action on the ground taking place, I don't know. There's another scenario where I just I can see it happening.
I've seen stuff like that. Yeah, Like you could even do through through a couple of telephonic tricks. You could even subject a nine to one one center to the to the telephone equivalent of a d DOS such that the real calls don't go through, right, and then the Shenanigans ensue. It's a very dangerous thing, but it is unfortunately quite plausible, and that's why we are happy to report. Still most people in the United States do trust the emergency alert system. Nobody, for instance, is looking at an Amber alert on their phone and going fake news. Thankfully, we pay attention when it pops up, at least long enough to hear that iconic voice tell us whether or not this is only a test. Yeah, the unsung hero of unsung hero of interrupt.
He's like the.
Wilhelm scream of government broadcast cut ins.
He's like the He's kind of like the producer voices on public radio. They never identify themselves. They just drop in and tell you what's coming up next after the news.
Dude, they should get like al Pacino or somebody to do it. You know, we're across the entirety of the United States.
Al this is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Kevin, He's always going to be Devil's advocate. He's talking to Kevin directly.
What this does?
I think, especially that beautiful scenario, mat this does give us a lot to think about how securit these systems today. In some cases, it appears to be the stuff they don't want you to know, So we want to hear from you, folks. We know that there's some of us out there this evening who have direct experience with this, certainly with the related field of online security right and security research. So tell us your thoughts, tell us the weirdest stuff you've heard on emergency alert systems, and hey, if you happen to be one of those folks who saw the zombie apocalypse alert live live is a weird word way to describe the zombie situation, but if you know what we mean, if you saw it in situ while it's happening, tell us your experience. We try to be easy to find online.
We do.
You can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook where we have our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy. On YouTube where we make videos and have them coming your way on the regular, as well as on XFKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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