>I can almost guarantee this was just a kid messing around.

Or someone pushed the wrong button. Remember, this is the same city that threw T-Mobile under the bus a month ago saying their callers were 'ghost calling' their 911 system with a bug causing the lines to clog.

In that case, it turned out to be actual callers trying to get through and the calls weren't being answered because a quarter of the already understaffed call center called out. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas-city-hall/2017/03/20/...

So yeah, I'm not betting on hackers for this one. I'm betting on incompetence.

While I agree this is the most obvious suspect, the crippling effect it had on emergency services like 911 probably got the attention of more nefarious players.

I'm not saying that I agree that it was a foreign power that did this, but there are motives. If you can turn the sirens on and keep them on for a while, you can probably turn them off and keep them off for a while. That could be bad in a situation where they really, really needed to be turned on.

The nation state actor who cried "BWOOOOOOOOOO"? That is, if you turn on the sirens often enough, maybe they'll be ignored in an emergency.