Tuesday afternoon, some Hudson Valley residents were startled by a public safety alert from the NYS Office of Emergency Management, somewhat confusingly stating that “New York State 9-1-1 services are working and operational. There are no known issues with New York State 9-1-1 services at this time.”
So what was the cause for the emergency alert? So far, business as usual. In fact, the alert itself wasn’t immediately clear in its purpose as it continued: “For issues with Massachusetts 9-1-1, follow guidance issued by the State of Massachusetts.”
A quick online search was necessary to uncover the meaning of this alert: Our neighbors in Massachusetts were experiencing a widespread 911 outage, and residents were being warned of delays in emergency response. They were urged by state officials to contact local public safety businesses and offices in the event of an emergency.
Massachusetts uses a Next Generation 911 (NG911) system. This system enhances emergency communication by utilizing an Internet Protocol (IP) platform, allowing for improved accuracy in location data and the ability to receive texts, images, and videos from the public. Many cybersecurity experts (including those at the Department for Homeland Security) have voiced concerns that NG911 systems are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks, though no confirmation on whether this was a cyberattack was immediately communicated, nor would such immediate confirmation be expected.
In late April, state officials confirmed that Lowell, Massachusetts, experienced a significant cyberattack. Attributed to the Play ransomware group, the hacking impacted various municipal systems, including servers, networks, and phones, but did not affect the city’s 911, fire, or emergency phone systems. City officials quickly isolated the affected systems to prevent further damage and began a comprehensive recovery process involving state and federal agencies.
Digital communication systems are also vulnerable to hardware and software malfunctions, which have been known to temporarily take down 911 services in the past.
Deeper searching revealed rampant disinformation about the emergency alert was circulating on social media, particularly with regard to the outage affecting states other than Massachusetts including New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. Some non-Massachusetts residents claimed to have received the Massachusetts emergency alert in their home state. Viral, inaccurate reports of a more widespread outage seem to have been caused by or at least exacerbated by clickbait news headlines such as “911 down in Maine, Rhode Island and New York? Reports Emerge After Massachusetts outage.”
The emergency alert was not received by everyone in New York — several reported receiving no alert whatsoever.
A recent study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that only 51% of consumers who read an online news story actually read the entire article. Another 26% read part of the article, while 22% only looked at the headline or a few lines​.
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