Wild Friday: Still Unsolved WGN Hacked by Max Headroom!

Wild Friday:  In 1987, somebody hacked the signal of Chicago’s WGN-TV. 25 years later, Vice’s Motherboard blog has published a fascinating investigation into who pulled off the still unsolved crime. Swing over there for a bunch of videos (including the non -elated but amusingly titled Naked Hippo show for kids.) The mysterious hacker interrupted the news at 9:14 PM on Nov 22 1987 wearing a  mask a mask of cult fictional British VJ.  Max Headroom.

Motherboard looked at FBI reports and says the hacker would have had to switch on their transmission equipment at a high enough location, probably a high-rise apartment or a roof, at a place between the  studios and the Sears Tower. From there, they could trick the transmitters into sending out their own signal. Read the whole fascinating and much-overdue dig into a piece of hacker lore.