The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack

The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack(motherboard.vice.com)

201 points by mjschultz 12 years ago | 11 comments

mjschultz 12 years ago |

Also, here is the Wikipedia article on the matter [1]. And a Reddit thread (presented as one of the theories in the article) [2].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_i...

[2]: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e

Mithaldu 12 years ago |

This is a very long article. Is it just a rehash of what happened, or does it contain any new info figured out in the past year?

mjschultz 12 years ago | |

To answer your question directly, no I don't think so (perhaps some updated theories, but nothing concrete).

But the article does cover more than just the incident, I found the whole thing fairly interesting.

Beyond the passing knowledge I have from growing up in Chicago-land around the time and the Wikipedia article on the subject, I thought it contextualized the FCC policies around the time of the incident and how the hack worked (from a high level). It also pointed out other signal intrusions from the same period and the FCC/FBI's methods to track down the perpetrators.

thearn4 12 years ago | |

I had read all about the incident before, but had never seen the FBI report. So there is some stuff that you may not have seen.

MWil 12 years ago | |

If you haven't read the reddit thread from within the last year then it certainly has a great amount of new information. In fact, I thought the reddit theory was a more compelling story than this article

dfc 12 years ago | | |

I couldn't get past the writing style in the reddit post. Maybe it will be less abrasive in the morning with fresh eyes and some rest.

middleclick 12 years ago |

What a well-written and researched article. An absolutely fascinating read!

stox 12 years ago |

I still think someone from the Ripco crew were involved. They were mighty conveniently located. Maybe, someday, someone will spill the beans.

jccalhoun 12 years ago |

great article. One correction, however: They say one "suspect" was in "nearby" Bloomington, Indiana but Bloomington isn't really near Chicago. It is in Southern Indiana, about 4 hours away from Chicago and to get to Chicago you have to go through Indianapolis, so if someone from Bloomington were to do something like this it seems much more likely they would do it in Indianapolis or even Louisville or Cincinnati which are both closer than Chicago.

todd3834 12 years ago | |

Unless that was part of how they intended to avoid getting caught

elwell 12 years ago |

is that the same character on the tv's in eminem's new video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGs_qK2PQA