BOULDER — On October 3, 2018, cell phones across the United States received a text message labeled “Presidential Alert.” The message read: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”

It was the first trial run for a new national alert system, developed by several U.S. government agencies as a way to warn as many people across the United States as possible if a disaster was imminent. 

Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder raises a red flag around these alerts—namely, that such emergency alerts authorized by the President of the United States can, theoretically, be spoofed.

The team, including faculty from CU Engineering’s Department of Computer Science (CS), Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (ECEE) and the Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy (TCP) program discovered a back door through which hackers might mimic those alerts, blasting fake messages to people in a confined area, such as a sports arena or a dense city block.

The researchers, who have already reported their results to U.S. Government officials, say that the goal of their study is to work with relevant authorities to prevent such an attack in the future.

“We think this is something the public should be aware of to encourage cell carriers and standards bodies to correct this problem,” said Eric Wustrow, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in ECEE. “In the meantime, people should probably still trust the emergency alerts they see on their phones.”

The researchers reported their results at the 2019 International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys) in Seoul, South Korea, where their study won the award for “best paper.”

Wustrow said that he and colleagues Sangtae Ha and Dirk Grunwald decided to pursue the project, in part, because of a real-life event.

In January 2018, months before the first presidential alert test went out, millions of Hawaiians received a similar, but seemingly genuine, message on their phones: someone had launched a ballistic missile attack on the state.

It was, of course, a mistake, but that event made the CU Boulder team wonder: How secure are such emergency alerts?

The answer, at least for presidentially-authorized alerts, hinges on where you look.

“Sending the emergency alert from the government to the cell towers is reasonably secure,” said co-author Sangtae Ha, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. “But there are huge vulnerabilities between the cell tower and the users.”

Ha explained that because the government wants presidential alerts to reach as many cell phones as possible, it takes a broad approach to broadcasting these alerts—sending messages through a distinct channel to every device in range of a cell tower.

He and his colleagues discovered that hackers could exploit that loophole by creating their own, black market cell towers. First, the team, working in a secured lab, developed software that could mimic the format of a presidential alert. 

“We only need to broadcast that message into the right channel, and the smartphone will pick it up and display it,” Ha said.

And, he said, the team found that such messages could be sent out using commercially-available wireless transmitters with a high success rate—or roughly hitting 90 percent of phones in an area the size of CU Boulder’s Folsom Field, potentially sending malicious warnings to tens of thousands of people.

It’s a potentially major threat to public safety, said Grunwald, a professor in computer science.

“We think it is concerning, which is why we went through a responsible disclosure process with different government agencies and carriers,” he said. 

The team has already come up with a few ways to thwart such an attack and are working with partners in industry and government to determine which mechanisms are most effective. 

Other co-authors on the new study include CU Boulder graduate students and researchers Gyuhong Lee, Jihoon Lee, Jinsung Lee, Youngbin Im and Max Hollingsworth.

 

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As part of the largest interventional canine clinical trial ever conducted, veterinarians leading the Vaccine Against Canine Cancer Study seek to enroll 800 healthy, middle-aged pet dogs to evaluate the effectiveness of a new cancer prevention vaccine.

The clinical trials portion of the study is led by Colorado State University’s Dr. Douglas Thamm, director of clinical research at the Flint Animal Cancer Center at the James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

“As one of the top animal cancer centers in the world, CSU and our team is in an excellent position to lead this new clinical trial,” Thamm said. “We look forward to contributing to this groundbreaking research study.”

Because of the size and scope of the project, three veterinary schools will participate in the clinical trials. In addition to CSU, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Davis will recruit patients for the study.

Stephanie Foster, who is from Highlands Ranch, decided to see if her dog, Fraser, would qualify for the study. After a physical exam, bloodwork, ultrasound and X-rays, Fraser was cleared for enrollment in the trial in mid-May and was among the first dogs to receive a vaccination at CSU.

“One year after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my dog Maple, was diagnosed with lymphoma. She died nine months later,” Foster said. “I hate cancer and if there’s a chance that this vaccine will prevent cancer in Fraser and we can find a way to prevent cancer all together in dogs and maybe even people, that would be a dream come true.”

Study qualifications

Owners must live within 150 miles of one of the participating trial sites.

To qualify, dogs must:

• Be between 6 and 10 years of age
• Weigh at least 12 pounds (5 kilograms)
• Have no history of previous cancer or autoimmune disease
• Have no significant illnesses that could result in a life span fewer than five years
• Not be on a current treatment with oral or injectable immunosuppressive medications

In addition, dogs must be among the following breeds: boxers, German shepherds, golden retrievers, Labrador retrievers and a variety of mixed-breed dogs. See the complete list of breeds, 45 in total, on our website.

Companion dogs that meet the screening criteria will be randomly chosen to receive either the vaccine or a placebo version on a routine schedule. Study participants will live at home and visit the study site for semiannual check-ups for five years.

Patients that receive the placebo vaccine are expected to develop cancer at normal rates. The trial will determine whether the vaccine can delay or prevent cancer development in the vaccinated group.

Any owner whose dog develops cancer during the trial, on either the test or control arm, will be given a hospital credit that can be used for the diagnosis and treatment of their cancer.

Pet owners may visit the clinical trials website to begin the enrollment and screening process.

About the vaccine

For decades, conventional wisdom has suggested that a universal, preventive cancer vaccine would not be possible because all cancers are unique. However, Stephen Johnston, a professor and director of the Center for Innovations in Medicine, part of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, and his team recently discovered a way to identify commonalities among cancerous tumors. Using that information, they developed what they believe is a potential one-size-fits-all cancer prevention vaccine.

The new vaccine, called a multivalent frameshift peptide vaccine, was effective in mice and has been shown to be safe for use in companion animals.

The road to clinical trial

After developing and testing the vaccine in the lab, Johnston needed to identify a veterinarian to move the vaccine into a clinical trial in dogs. He chose Thamm, a trusted colleague who has collaborated with him for more than a decade.

“When Stephen brought up the idea of a universal cancer preventative vaccine, I was skeptical,” Thamm said. “However, the data he has shared has convinced me that the vaccine is worth testing.”

The project is supported by a multiyear grant of $6.4 million from the Open Philanthropy Project, which granted the award to Johnston in 2018.

If successful, this trial would provide strong support for the concept of using vaccines to prevent cancer in its earliest stages and could eventually justify human clinical trials.

“This is a critical study in the evaluation of this vaccine,” Thamm said. “While effectiveness has been shown in the lab, moving immediately to a very large, expensive and time-consuming human study is a leap that is hard to justify. Testing this approach in dogs will serve as the perfect bridge to human studies. Additionally, if it is successful, we will have a new tool for cancer prevention in our pets, potentially decades before it is available for humans.”