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Radio Station Hijacked Eight Times In the Past Month To Play 'I'm a Wanker' Song (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: An unknown hacker has hijacked the radio frequency of a UK radio station to play an obscene song eight times during the past month, according to the radio station's manager who recently revealed the hacks in an interview with BBC Radio 4. The hacks have been reported to Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, who together with the radio station's staff have tried to track down the culprit at last three times, without success. Ofcom and radio station officials believe the hacker is using a mobile radio transmitter to broadcast a stronger signal on the radio station's normal frequency, overriding its normal program. In eight different occasions, the hacker has taken over broadcasts and has been heard talking, screaming, or singing, and then playing "The Winker's Song" (NSFW) by British comedian Ivor Biggun, a track about self-pleasure released in the 70s. Station manager Tony Delahunty told BBC Radio he received phone calls from distressed listeners complaining that their kids started humming the song. Fellow radio stations also called Delahunty to inquire about the hack, fearing similar hijacks.
> Ofcom and radio station officials believe the hacker is using a mobile radio transmitter to broadcast a stronger signal on the radio station's normal frequency, overriding its normal program.
Either this is the weakest commercial radio station in the world, or the "hacker" has access to a massive amplifier and antenna, or he's just overriding the station's frequency in a very small area. My money is on the last of those, and also that this story is of negligible significance.
Or perhaps the officials are wrong and the guy is overpowering a much weaker studio-to-transmitter link and using the station's own signal to broadcast his onanistic outrage.
This is just an old fashioned pirate radio.
It will be awhile, but if the pirate continues doing this, they will find him and grind them into dust.
Most people don't realize that the BEST jokes are the ones that happen only a few times and when the jokester does it enough to be noticed but stops before they get caught.
Some of my best pranks are ones I only did a few times with long intervals in between. The best being an E-mail prank that I only pulled twice in 3 years and nobody suspected that it was me until a decade later after I told the Sys Admin staff the secret on my last day so they could fix the hole. I still remember the crazy searching for the perpetrator and the hand wringing memos from embarrassed management types getting posted on the bulletin boards in the break room....
Then there was the changing of the channels in the cafeteria TV's that just mysteriously happened even though they where out of reach and the remote controls locked up in the boss' office...I did that one a couple of times a week, using an IR recording/playback device, for a month, stopped when the Boss set up a surveillance camera, then did it every few weeks once the camera disappeared. I'm sure it drove him crazy because he was complaining about it in public... Not sure if he caught on to me after I left there or not, but I got really tired of CNN only on the TV's at lunch.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You know what is even more obscene? Parents getting upset over this instead of bands of kids setting sleeping homeless men and women on fire for the thrill of it, something that happens in both the US and the UK
Yeah that could have been worded better. Signal hijacking or intrusion is a better word. The transmitter towers are line of sight from the studio so all you need is a transmitter and antenna to get in the way. I wish the Max Headroom guy would come forward and reveal the details. The statute is limitations is long up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
a mobile transmitter... sounds like ge's got himself a CB radio with sidebands (illegal in the UK) which can hit the FM spectrum allocated to radio stations. then plug that little fucker into a linear amplifier(even 100watts will blast the shit out that station) and the antenna of your choice depending on how immediately mobile you feel you need to be.
As I recall you go onto the am bands and then hit the "high button".. and that takes you into FM where you can pick a station or an empty space to broadcast over/on. My cousin and i used to do something like that except we'd broadcast in vacant parts of the radio frequency and always from a different location.... mind you that was in the 80's and long before we got out Full RAE exams passed and became licensed radio amateurs.. way back when an MM0 *** call sign was shiny and new.
There are parts of Europe which haven't switched to DAB+
Oh, boy I can't wait for another finicky all-or-nothing digital broadcasting system and hundreds of radio sets at the recycling bin.