http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/eas_hack_attack/
By Kevin Poulsen
SecurityFocus
13th August 2004
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."
The EAS was launched in 1997 to replace the cold-war era Emergency
Broadcast System known best for making the phrase "this is only a
test" a cultural touchstone. Like that earlier system, the EAS is
designed to allow the President to interrupt television and radio
programming and speak directly to the American people in the event of
an impending nuclear war, or a similarly extreme national emergency.
The system has never been activated for that purpose, but state and
local officials have found it a valuable channel for warning the
public of regional emergencies, including the "Amber Alerts" credited
with the recovery of 150 abducted children.
Despite its regional successes, the EAS is increasingly under fire by
critics who charge that its national mission is obsolete in an era of
instant 24-hour news coverage, and who deride its quaint reliance on
analog radio and broadcast and cable television. On Thursday, the FCC
responded by opening a formal review of the EAS, beginning a public
comment period on how the network might be improved. One of the issues
the FCC is probing is the security of the system.
As first reported by SecurityFocus nearly two years ago, the EAS was
built without basic authentication mechanisms, and is activated
locally by unencrypted low-speed modem transmissions over public
airwaves. That places radio and television broadcasters and cable TV
companies at risk of being fooled by spoofers with a little technical
know-how and some off-the-shelf electronic components. Under FCC
regulations, unattended stations must automatically interrupt their
broadcasts to forward alerts, making it possible for even blatantly
false information to be forwarded without first passing human
inspection.
The FCC's review follows a detailed report on the EAS produced by the
non-profit Partnership for Public Warning (PPW) in February, which
noted that "EAS security is now very much an issue."
"Since attacks involving chemical or biological weapons are likely to
require use of the EAS system to provide official alert information to
the public, it is possible that an attacker could decide to cripple
the EAS or use it to spread damaging disinformation," reads the PPW
report.
With Thursday's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC acknowledged
the vulnerabilities "could be exploited during times of heightened
public anxiety and uncertainty" to distribute false information to the
public, or that alternatively the "EAS signal could be subject to
jamming."
Among the questions the FCC is pondering: how best to protect
broadcasters from legal liability if they inadvertently rebroadcast a
false EAS message; who should be responsible for system security; how
can the authenticity of EAS messages be verified; and "what security
standards, if any, should be implemented?"
"The Commission must now buckle down and do what it is we are asking
state and local officials to do - assess vulnerabilities, create a
plan for better service, and review and update that plan as
communications technologies evolve," said commissioner Jonathan
Adelstein in a statement.
There are no reported cases of the EAS vulnerabilities being
exploited, and the PPW report concludes that the potential
consequences of spoofing attacks are limited. "Research into the
behavior of warning recipients suggests that a single false alarm,
without corroboration from other credible sources, generally elicits
only limited reaction from the public."
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Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable -
http://www.osvdb.org/
