Comment by uabstraction | Hacker News Reader

Comment by uabstraction | Hacker News Reader

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I'll go right ahead and call you a conspiracy theorist. If you think The US intelligence community would go out of their way to stir up a panic like this just because CoIntelPro was a thing 50 years ago, with no other evidence or reasonable motives, you must be a UFO chasing loon.

If there is anything nefarious here (seems like it), this is the work of a foreign state actor probing our infrastructure for exploitable weaknesses and sizing up our response. I'll put my money on Russia, who has already been attacking our elections¹, energy infrastructure², social media, and spearphishing candidates and elected officials³.

They have conducted similar attacks in the past, sending out tweets and text message alerts to hundreds of people for nonexistent emergencies⁴.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/russian-b...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russi...

[3] https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe...

[4] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.ht...

You say he's a conspiracy theorist and then jump to Russia gaining access to the emergency alert system? Seriously? Both these scenarios sound equally probably or improbable to me.

Glad iam not the only one noticed.

That escalated quickly.

It follows a clear pattern of behavior which has been escalating for years. If this wasn't a boneheaded mistake, it was an attack.

Or it was "just a prank, bro!"

Pranksters hack the emergency alert system on a semi-regular basis.

So the plausibility of Russia doing it would be based on whether they would bother or not.

Pranksters=/=Russia.

I didn't say otherwise. I implied that if pranksters can pull off a hack it is likely that Russia also can.

So why implicate Russia at all, if its so easy? Sounds like a red herring to me, and also just as conspiratorial as the parent comment.

Both Russia and NK have obvious motives and capability to do it.

It doesn't mean you stop looking for causes or eliminate human error though.

The viability of Russia/NK depends on how the EAS network is set up in Hawaii. If they have internet-facing servers, it's completely possible.

Still, implicating other countries so soon seems premature and reactonary to me. Its like corporate news jumping to 'terrorism' immediately after any domestic tragedy. Our threat models need to include more than just nation states. Otherwise, we end up contributing to escalation through untethered fear.

you are a great tensor, mokoya

You've got some fake news in your citations, "bro."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/the-v...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-ne...

Don't you think conspiracies happen every once in a while?

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