Hacker illegally activates Brunswick emergency sirens

[adamnfd202]

Im with a small fire department in Alabama and one of our radios were stolen from a truck and it had two tone encode and until the battery died we were hit with so many false pages it was unreal. Is there any way to trace an unauthorized radio on an analog UHF of VHF system?

 

[KE0SKN]

Yes there is but its time comsuming. Its called "DXing" or "Foxhunting". My freinds and I are Ham radio operators and we do this kind of thing all the time.

 

[rcvmo]

I work on Outdoor warning sirens. Depending on what type system it is, it may be possible, and in a few cases I've seen this happen where the battery back-up gets low, causes a glitch on the internal computer, then all hell breaks loose. I've seen the situation where sirens operated on lo-band / 2-tone get falsed all the time due to skip. You can make recomendations, but it all depends on the budget these days.
If someone is blatantly bragging about "Check this out? ", time to sit on freq. with a couple DF units.
rcvmo

 

[Grog]

Im with a small fire department in Alabama and one of our radios were stolen from a truck and it had two tone encode and until the battery died we were hit with so many false pages it was unreal. Is there any way to trace an unauthorized radio on an analog UHF of VHF system?

Some radios can also be hit with a "kill/stun" command.

 

[firefighter89]

I don't know what type of radio system they use but in my county the sirens are set off by QCII tones on the main fire dispatch frequency. We use a conventional VHF system so anybody with a VHF radio that has tone encode could set off every siren in the county.

 

[chrismol1]

Guess what just happened today to Hillcrest FD
I have a minitor 2 pager on the counties 46.42 Fire Control
There was a motorclyle and ambulance crash (the cycle hit the ambulance, i know wow)
And the tones for the local FD at the crash went off, this is quite a few miles away from Hillcrest FD
Then a few min later Hillcrest Base was asking fire control what the alarm was
Comes to find out that somehow the other FD's tones set off Hillcrests siren
Fire control said that they would look into it, and they did a test again to see if it would happen again, and by setting off this other departments tones, set off Hillcrest's tones
just something to throw out there, i wonder what could have happened? I'm thinking that something at dispatch got screwed up, but i dont know after the second test and the same results

 

[datainmotion]

http://www.brunswick.oh.us/Administration/outdoorearlywarningsirens.html

The picture on that page shows a Federal Signal Siren. FS Sirens typically use two-tone or DTMF over the air with a "digital encryption of activation" option on some models.

My guess is straight two-tone or DTMF is used in Brunswick and easy to spoof.

 

[stevedogan]

Actually, I'm currently researching this problem as a security class project for my law enforcement training. There ARE legitimate reasons for such things. Too many people today are too skeptical of everyone else. (My instructors don't agree with my philosophy considering the profession, but do admit I have a point to some extent.) You have to look at WHAT is being asked by who and when under what circumstances. There's a MAJOR difference between asking for info. -even in-depth info.- as I'm doing for class on things like this, and say, going to the local E.M. office and asking "What are your specific codes for setting off the sirens? Oh I'm just curious."
Anywho...I'm actually wondering, part for class, part out of, yes, simple curiosity how those sirens are activated and what would stop someone from messing around maliciously with them. Is it as simple as punching the right DTMF codes over the specific frequency? If so, how likely is it that someone could simply record the tones on a scanner then play them back over a 2 way radio and mess things up? I would think that with technology, there wouldn't be any city, town, county, state, or federal area that uses this simple way anymore as a means of activating the sirens. We have a volunteer fire Dept. horn that used to sound to alert the firemen to the station when needed. It hasn't been used-even for noon hour, as it used to be every day at 12:00 for about 20 years. I'm guessing this worked the same way?

There a huge difference between sending tones over digital P25 (which doesnt work) and sending a call alert. Going to the extreme of encrypting a siren alert is way over board when there are many other very secure and substantially cheaper ways to do it. I would have serious concerns of anyone looking around for frequency and tone information for sirens. If they have the legal right to set them off then obtaining that information would be very easy. What use would anyone else have. Let me guess they are just curious and want to listen to the tones on there scanner?
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[stevedogan]

You wouldn't be saying that it's simply along the same line as sending DTMF tones say, similar to the tones I hear being "played" over the 2 meter band when the control operator is testing or programming the repeater, would you? There was someone a few years ago that some of the amateurs in my area were looking like crazy for because someone was messing around keying up a 2 way on the repeater pushing #'s on the keypad sending tones out. I overheard some guys talking at a local amateur meeting I went to out of curiosity once about how they wanted to find the one responsible before they hit the right code and mess things up, or words to that extent. Same thing more or less with how the sirens could be interfered with?

http://www.brunswick.oh.us/Administration/outdoorearlywarningsirens.html

The picture on that page shows a Federal Signal Siren. FS Sirens typically use two-tone or DTMF over the air with a "digital encryption of activation" option on some models.

My guess is straight two-tone or DTMF is used in Brunswick and easy to spoof.