14 DAY TRIAL // Hackers managed to take down part of the 911 dispatch system in Baltimore on Sunday morning, and operators had to process calls manually during the outage.
A report from Baltimore Sun reveals that the cyberattack was launched on Sunday at 8:30 AM, and 911 and 311 emergency services were switched to manual mode until 2 AM on Monday.
It was just “a limited breach,” Frank Johnson, chief information officer in the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology, was quoted as saying, with only the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system pushed offline. The FBI said it provided technical assistance, and an investigation is under way to determine what exactly happened and who might be responsible for the attack.
“Instead of details of incoming callers seeking emergency support being relayed to dispatchers electronically, they were relayed by call center support staff manually,” Johnson said.
Investigation under way
Police forces say no slowdown was recorded in terms of responding to emergency calls, and city officials explain that no other systems were targeted by the attack, though additional servers were taken offline in an attempt to prevent further damage.
The CAD system plays a particularly important role for 911 dispatchers, as it provides information on callers, including the location on the map and personal details. This substantially reduces response times because operators can connect to the closest emergency responders faster, while also displaying further data in the case of mobile phone users who don’t know their location.
The outage happened at the worst possible time for the Baltimore authorities, as thousands of people marched against gun violence in the United States the past weekend.
By the looks of things, no information was compromised and the hackers were particularly interested in taking the servers down, though it remains to be seen if law enforcement manages to discover who launched the attack. The police say that further information will be provided at a later time, as any details made public right now could compromise the investigation.