Imagine the distress if a DDoS attack the size of the one that attacked Dyn could take down entire 911 call centers.
HackRead Explains:
Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai from Arizona was caught and arrested [PDF] by the police for allegedly triggering a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on the 911 emergency call system.It is being suspected that Mr. Desai owned a YouTube channel as well as a blog which he used for describing the vulnerabilities identified by him.Recently, Mr. Desai Tweeted about a javascript exploit that enabled phones and tablets to make calls at 911 continuously. The exploit instantly attracted the attention of the viewers, and over a thousand people flooded the phone lines of 911 emergency call centers all across the country.According to a statement given to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department by Mr. Desai, a friend of his discovered this vulnerability and tweaked it to enable pop-ups, open emails and to make phone calls. All these attempts, as per Desai, were conducted for just the sake of fun.