Listeners to at least three radio stations and one (unidentified) radio network got quite an earful last week when their programming was hijacked by an unknown hacker. The intruder, who used a search engine of internet-connected devices to find unprotected audio transfer equipment in radio stations/networks’ airchains, was able to compromise several of them because the targeted stations/networks either never changed the equipment’s default password, or they used a weak password that was easily bypassed.
The hacked stations all broadcast episodes of a comedy podcast devoted to furries, a subculture of people who like to dress up (and oftentimes, have sex) in animal costumery. “FurCast” is defintiely not-safe-for-work material, and the stations spent more than an hour airing them. According to the podcast’s producers, they noted a spike of “hundreds of connections” in podcast-download traffic last week, all of which were coming from hacked radio stations/networks, and were able to cut off the OTA simulcasts by changing the IP address from which podcast downloads originate. Continue reading “When Will They Learn: Several Radio Stations + One Network Hijacked”