The FCC points out that using such tones is prohibited outside of emergencies, adding that it was a serious public safety concern. “These rules aim to protect the integrity of the alert system by helping to avoid confusion when the tones are used, alert fatigue among listeners and false activation of the EAS by the operative data elements contained in the alert tone,” it explained in a news release.

ABC told the FCC that there was a “misunderstanding that the use of the tone was permissible.” The network has reportedly removed the part of the episode featuring the tones from YouTube and elsewhere, and elected to not rebroadcast the episode.

While the idea of the skit was amusing, government officials said last year that neither Trump nor any other president could “wake up one morning and attempt to send a personal message” using the system. Earlier this month, FEMA conducted a real emergency alert test to confirm that it would work if there was power but no internet.

In their paper, the researchers developed and tested a spoofing attack on presidential alerts. They used commercially available hardware and modified open-source software to send messages to nearly every phone in a 50,000-seat stadium with a 90 percent success rate. The vulnerability is due to the fact that WEA alerts use LTE. Alerts are sent on a specific channel to every compatible device in range, and there’s no way for the device to verify the authenticity of the alert. Presidential alerts are especially risky because users can’t opt out of them, as they can with AMBER alerts or weather warnings.

“Fake alerts in crowded cities or stadiums could potentially result in cascades of panic,” the researchers wrote. We got a glimpse of just how disruptive fake alerts can be last year, when a false alert mistakenly warned every cellphone in Hawaii that a nuclear missile was on its way. The panic would be more widespread if an alert were sent out nationwide. The paper warns that fixing the problem will require “a large collaborative effort between carriers, government stakeholders, and cell phone manufacturers.” Given the US government’s relationship with some cell phone manufacturers in particular, that seems like a big ask.