Skip to main content

A cyberattack in Dallas managed to set off all 156 alarms in the city

dallas cyberattack sirens 49377348 ml
rafaelbenari/Flickr
In what may have been the loudest cyberattack ever, a data breach resulted in an hour-and-a-half of blaring sirens in Dallas. The Texas city has a total of 156 sirens meant to sound the alarm for danger, which were themselves a nuisance when the entire warning system was breached late Friday night and into Saturday morning.

“At this point, we can tell you with a good deal of confidence that this was somebody outside of our system that got in there and activated our sirens,” city Emergency Management Director Rocky Vaz told reporters. The hack is believed to have been carried out by someone in the area, city spokeswoman Sana Syed revealed in an email statement.

Warning—video below contains adult language

Sirens going on in Dallas Texas

Given that the hack is said to be the largest ever with regard to emergency sirens, experts are on high alert. “This is a very, very rare event,” Vaz said. While most hacks only manage to trigger a couple sirens at most, this most recent breach was significantly more extensive.

Recommended Videos

As it stands, city engineers are resetting the alert system, and are slated to complete their work by the end of the weekend. But for now, that means that Dallas residents (all 1.6 million of them), will have to resort to local media, emergency 911 phone calls, and a federal radio alert system should any serious situation arise. This attack goes far beyond an annoying prank.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

This isn’t the first time an emergency system has been compromised. Indeed, cybersecurity officials have previously expressed concern over the entire 911 system, which has also proven vulnerable. Currently, the Dallas hack is being examined by system engineers. While the Federal Communications Commission has been contacted, police have not yet been called in.

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
This is the GPU I’m most excited for in 2025 — and it’s not by Nvidia
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card.

The next few months will completely redefine every ranking of the best graphics cards. With Nvidia's RTX 50-series and AMD's RDNA 4 most likely launching in January -- and even Intel possibly expanding its Battlemage lineup -- there's a lot to look forward to.

But as for me, I already know which GPU I'm most excited about. And no, it's not Nvidia's rumored almighty RTX 5090. The GPU I'm looking forward to is AMD's upcoming flagship, which will presumably be the RX 8800 XT (or perhaps the RX 9070 XT). Below, I'll tell you why I think this GPU is going to be so important not just for AMD but also for the entire graphics card market.
Setting the pace

Read more
Google Street View camera captures highly suspicious act, leading to arrests
The Google Street View image showing someone loading a large bundle into the trunk of a car.

Imagery from Google’s Street View has reportedly helped to solve a murder case in northern Spain.

Street View is the online tool that lets you view 360-degree imagery captured by cameras mounted on Google’s Street View cars that travel the world.

Read more
AMD’s RDNA 4 may surprise us in more ways than one
AMD RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards.

Thanks to all the leaks, I thought I knew what to expect with AMD's upcoming RDNA 4. It turns out I may have been wrong on more than one account.

The latest leaks reveal that AMD's upcoming best graphics card may not be called the RX 8800 XT, as most leakers predicted, but will instead be referred to as the  RX 9070 XT. In addition, the first leaked benchmark of the GPU gives us a glimpse into the kind of performance we can expect, which could turn out to be a bit of a letdown.

Read more