A telephony denial of service (TDoS) attack is a specific type of DDoS attack that originates from or is directed towards a telephone system with the intent of bringing down the targeted system. These attacks commonly focus on commercial businesses and may often include ransomware requests. In reality, these attacks can affect anyone, including our nation’s 911 infrastructure, because even it is not isolated from or immune from these types of attacks. And based on its mission, in many ways, it is more fragile.

Unintentional TDoS attack

Just last year, 911 centers across the country, including a site in Phoenix, Arizona, were the targets of allegedly unintentional 911 TDoS attacks when some malicious JavaScript code was published on a web page. The code, once loaded on a smartphone browser, would cause some devices to automatically dial 911 repeatedly without user intervention and without the user’s knowledge. 

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AT&T Wireless customers who tried to reach 911 in the evening hours of Wednesday, March 8, were left stranded in more than a dozen major cities. Based on unconfirmed, but widespread reports, the problem may have affected callers nationwide, with AT&T only sending out tweets again and again, stating:

[AT&T is aware] of issue affecting some calls to 911 for wireless customers. Working to resolve ASAP. We apologize to those affected. 

With no root cause offered, several public safety agencies and citizens were left confused on what to do. In what has become a natural reaction to any traumatic event, both the general public and several agencies took to Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets on the web as the go-to place for help, as well as an outlet for frustration—with many announcing their intentions to switch carriers.

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In the early morning hours of Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016, an apparent Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attack was brought against several cities that brought 911 to a grinding halt.

The incident triggered a response from the Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center National Coordinating Center for Communications (NCIC/NCC) and a Watch Advisory for a TDoS attack on public-safety answering points (PSAP) was issued just after lunch.

Investigators were led to a web page created by 18-year-old, Phoenix-based Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai. Desai said he was merely looking for bugs in Apple's iOS in an attempt to capture a reward from Apple as part of its bug bounty program. Apple launched this long-awaited program in September, and the company is offering five different categories of reward prizes:

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If you were watching TV at 2:20 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Sept. 28, you would have heard and seen a test of the Emergency Alert System. You might not have thought much about it, as similar tests have been done in the past.

What made this test different was that it was a retest of a failed EAS test conducted five years ago. A live code was used to activate a national Emergency Action Notification (EAN) message that was broadcast. Five years ago, the test failed—some heard audio but saw no text, while some saw text but heard no audio. On Wednesday, the test was a success—the audio and text were successfully transmitted.

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Even a failed result can be a successful test

If you live in the United States, it's likely that you've fallen asleep with the television on only to be woken in the middle of the night by shrill tones blaring from your television set, followed by a deep baritone voice letting you know that there is no active nuclear attack or alert and what you experienced was only a test. 

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) was designed as a tiered distribution mechanism, very much like a pyramid, with the President of the United States positioned at the pinnacle. As you move down the tiers of the pyramid, you become more regionalized and localized in the coverage area that is served. Using this logic, any participating station in the chain can initiate an emergency alert message, and by default, the information will trickle down to the lower tiers as stations monitor the tier above them. 

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Reaching 911 can mean the difference between life and death. But just connecting to the 911 center is only half the battle. Determining your location is the other half.

Despite the cool technology we see on TV and in the movies, when you make a 911 call from a cell phone, in actuality you are the proverbial needle in the haystack—and that haystack is in a dark room, and 911 has no flashlight.

+ Also on Network World: Why smartphones struggle with 911 +

Each year in the U.S., citizens make about 240 million 911 calls, with an estimated 192 million of them originating from cellular phones. With 911 Public Safety Answer Points (PSAPs) reporting inadequate location on these calls, it is no surprise that this presents a unique problem for public safety officials. 

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After ignoring a Congressional directive for more than three years, as well as an FCC commissioner’s direct request, the General Services Administration (GSA) finally produced a report on the status of 911 dialing in federal buildings. Despite the long delay, the content and quality of the report were disappointing at best.

On Feb. 22, 2012, the Middle-Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 was passed as Public Law 112-96. As with many bills, the law covered a broad array of topics, one of them being the establishment of a national public safety broadband network expanding high-speed wireless broadband and improving communications interoperability among first responders. Within this section, the law also required that the GSA audit and produce a report on the 911 capabilities of multi-line telephone systems (MLTS) used in the almost 10,000 federal buildings and facilities under their control.

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An urgent call to 911 from the front desk of an Anchorage, Alaska, hotel was routed to Ontario. Local police authorities blamed it on VoIP telephony services.

While VoIP does play a role in the issue, the core problem stems from improper provisioning of the phone service and is something that has happened before, when calls to 911 were routed to Northern 911, an Ontario company.

This specialized, privately operated 911 center functions as a "PSAP of last resort," taking calls meant for 911 that otherwise cannot be routed correctly, intercepting them manually. After determining the location of the incident, calls are then extended over trunks to administrative lines.

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Undoubtedly, the most common method used to contact emergency services is simply calling 911. While that will work just fine for most of us, for the 50 million citizens in the U.S. who are deaf, are deaf-blind or have a speech disability, dialing 911 on the phone is not an option.

Think about that for a second. You are deaf and experiencing a medical emergency, or witnessing one, and you can't report it, at least not in a timely or efficient manner.

Wait—didn’t we solve this problem decades ago?

Sort of, but as it turns out, not completely. It is true that in the 1960s scientist Robert Weitbrecht proposed the use of surplus recycled Teletype (TTY) machines for communications devices for the deaf. The TTYs were modified to allow the use of acoustic couplers, which made them easy to attach to any telephone receiver. The BAUDOT tones that they transmitted could be carried as audio on phone lines. And despite the machines being not very portable, for the first time a deaf person could reach out and communicate over phone lines.

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The biggest challenge cellular mobile phones introduce for 911 is location accuracy—especially during an emergency call. The problem is a global one, inherited with any wireless technology. Getting the location wrong directly impacts the level of safety provided to citizens, as routing the call to the most appropriate Public Safety Answer Position (PSAP) specifically relies on this critical piece of data.

Can you find me now?

Many of us don't stop and think how our mobile devices determine where we are on the planet, and most of us will assume GPS plays a significant role in providing that answer. While GPS remains an important piece of the location puzzle, quite often it is not the answer by itself. Fundamentally, there are three sources for location information used by cellular phones.

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When I was a kid in the 60s, 70s and arguably the 80s, the telephone provided me with a source of entertainment. I was able to make a free local call to anyone while maintaining full anonymity. I could pretend to be anyone I wanted to be, ask people if their refrigerator was running and then tell them that they should catch it, or play a multitude of pranks.

Caller ID was not available, so each time you answered the phone there was a great level of anticipation and mystery finding out who was on the other end each time the phone rang.

Today, almost everyone has caller ID with name display. Because of this, your number and name are shown to the person you're calling. And from their perspective, a certain level of confidence is assumed because we believe and trust what we see.

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Emergency 911 services first materialized in the United States when the Alabama Telephone Company established the service in the sleepy little town of Haleyville on Feb. 16, 1968. At that time, phone companies knew the installation address and phone number of each and every telephone device, and calls were routed based on this information. While seemingly unsophisticated by today’s standards, at the time, it was considered quite a feat of engineering.

The process remained valid until Sept. 21 of 1983 when the world changed forever. In a historic decision by the Federal Communications Commission, the Motorola 8000X, the world's first commercially available portable cell phone, was approved for service and personal mobility took on a brand-new meaning. What was the cost of this miraculous technology? For just under $4,000, consumers could ‘cut the cord’ that tethered them to the wall -- a small price to pay for a device that would revolutionize and redefine telecommunications history.

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