WASHINGTON – 911 call centers are vulnerable to cyberattacks, Senator Charles Schumer said on Wednesday. Some 80 percent of 911 calls come from infected cell phones and he said flooding the emergency centers could be crippled.
The senator pointed to a study that showed that 6,000 infected cell phones
deluging 911 centers in North Carolina could cause havoc in a real emergency
situation. It would only take 6,000 infected cell phones deluging 911
centers in North Carolina to cause havoc and only 200,000 infected devices
to cripple the nation, the senator said.
Schumer is calling on Homeland Security and the FCC to come up with a plan to prevent the vulnerability of 911 to cyberattacks.
“It’s just a matter of time before some hacker is going to try to do this, and you all know the consequences even if in one part of our state or our country, the 911 system goes down,” he said. “Our country’s critical infrastructure is far too valuable to would-be evil-doers. So we have to do more and fast to ward off this metastasizing threat.”
The senator admits he doesn’t have the answer, but that is what the federal agencies need to come up with ASAP.
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