The Siren Board

There was an accidental siren activation last night in the southwestern/western parts of St. Louis County (Missouri). According to local TV news reports, the "only way" that the sirens could have been activated is if someone somehow got a hold of the activation codes. So the blame is being placed on a hacker. Areas affected were Fenton, Chesterfield and Ballwin.

BTW, sirens involved would be Federal 2T22's, Whelen WPS-3016's and 4003's, and possibly some Whelen 2000's.

Wow. I hope that it at least made someone happy!

FedTB wrote:There was an accidental siren activation last night in the southwestern/western parts of St. Louis County (Missouri). According to local TV news reports, the "only way" that the sirens could have been activated is if someone somehow got a hold of the activation codes. So the blame is being placed on a hacker. Areas affected were Fenton, Chesterfield and Ballwin.

BTW, sirens involved would be Federal 2T22's, Whelen WPS-3016's and 4003's, and possibly some Whelen 2000's.

Now the 3016, 2000, and 4003 I can understand, since they're purely electronic, but how the heck could someone hack a 2t22?

It's not a matter of the sound producing parts being electronic, but the activation equipment which in this case and almost all cases now it electronic.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

If the activation is old-fashioned tones (DTMF) then it's only a matter of getting a clean recording of them.

Nobody's hacking the siren, actually, they're hacking the controls.

Growing up in the Cold War there were at least two or three "accidental" activations of the huge Thunderbolt system around DC where I grew up. For at least one or two of those times the system was controlled by a Western Electric wired system. I've always suspected that these "accidental" activations were designed to see how people would react to 500 sirens going off at 3:00 am. The public basically did nothing or called up the police station to ask what's up.

Just out of curiosity, how many digits are required to activate a siren via dtmf?

I don't know why it wouldn't be two corded tones like most DTMF systems.

SirenEnthusiast360 wrote:Just out of curiosity, how many digits are required to activate a siren via dtmf?

As many as you want.... It all depends on the system.

It depends on how the decoders are set up. They can be activated with as few as 1 digit or as many as necessary for the particular system.

Obviously, the more digits required, the more "secure" the system. On the flip side, the more digits, the greater chance there is of non-activation. If the decoder doesn't hear *all* of the tones, it won't close the contact that activates whatever it is hooked up to (siren, station alert, lights, etc...)

John

News Article/Video: http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.a ... yid=107551

Source: KSDK News.