"Next Generation 911 Services 'Highly Vulnerable to Cyber Attack'"

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) conducted a study in which they examined the impact of DDoS attacks on the current (E911) and next-generation 911 (NG911) infrastructures in North Carolina. According to the researchers, the next generation of 911 systems is still vulnerable to cyberattacks, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In the study, researchers discovered that the availability of a state's 911 services could be tied up by hackers through the use of at least 6,000 bots. Attackers can endanger the entire U.S. with only 200,000 bots. This article continues to discuss how NG911 is supposed to be an improvement over E911, the vulnerability of NG911 to DDoS attacks, how researchers demonstrated the impact of these attacks on 911 call systems, and current efforts to prevent such attacks.

Homeland Security Today reports "Next Generation 911 Services 'Highly Vulnerable to Cyber Attack'"