Criminals carry out phone-based DoS attacks on emergency services
Cyber criminals are tying up emergency phone lines with telephone DoS efforts, according to a top security expert.
TDoS is becoming a common weapon, both of annoyance and to extort cash from targets, including businesses and public service agencies
Security expert Brian Krebs wrote in his blog that TDoS attacks use high volumes of automated calls to tie up target phone systems, halting incoming and outgoing calls. So far there have been dozens of such attacks which have targeted the administrative public safety answering point lines, but fortunately not the 911 emergency line, according to the alert. The idea is that these offices are targeted because the crooks need functional phone lines to carry out their attacks.