The US Emergency Alert System (EAS) that lets officials instantly interrupt radio and TV broadcasts to provide emergency information in a crisis suffers from security holes that leave it vulnerable to denial of service attacks, and could even permit hackers to issue their own false regional alerts, federal regulators acknowledged Thursday.

"Security and encryption were not the primary design criteria when EAS was developed and initially implemented," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wrote in a public notice launching a review of the system. "Now, however, emergency managers are becoming more aware of potential vulnerabilities within the system. For example, the complete EAS protocol is a matter of public record and potentially subject to malicious activations or interference."

By Kevin Poulsen at The Register.

[ Read more ]