obligatory podcast episode: https://www.omnibusproject.com/216
The Max Headroom Incident
11–20 of 208 posts
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#12I was interested in finding out how the intrusion was accomplished, but the article devotes only a few words to explaining that, in a sentence that makes no grammatical sense. What does it mean to place a dish antenna “between the transmitter tower”?
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#13Is there a statute of limitations for a crime like this?
I'd love to find out who did it, how they did it, and why they did it and have no interest in seeing anybody punished for something so harmless that happened a long time ago...
Same goes for other famous unsolved crimes like the D.B. Cooper case.
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#14Haven’t heard about this before but it reminds me of a scene from the 1995 movie “Hackers”.
Scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdha_OV5saI
IMDb page for said movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/
I wonder if the scene in Hackers was inspired by the real world hacks that the OP article talks about.
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#15For anyone wondering, I recently re-watched the Max Headroom series & movie, and it still holds. I recommend you check it out, even if you hadn't seen it before.
The movie is an excellent piece of early cyberpunk. They were doing the "operator get me out of here" two decades before The Matrix.
The British TV interview show is meh. The American/ABC remake even more meh.
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#16It's always fascinating seeing the internet catalog and consolidate knowledge, especially regarding events that occurred pre-internet. Back when these events happened, a blurb appeared on TV news and in papers, but there was no easy way to get the big picture as the investigations evolved.
This wasn't pre-Internet though. This happened in 1987. EDIT: "the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983" -- people who know more about this than you.
[deleted]
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#17Is there a statute of limitations for a crime like this? I'd love to find out who did it, how they did it, and why they did it and have no interest in seeing anybody punished for something so harmless that happened a long time ago... Same goes for other famous unsolved crimes like the D.B. Cooper case.
Wikipedia says 5 years. It's really hard to believe there's anything on the books that would cover signal hijacking and has a statute of limitations longer than 34 years. IANAL.
A more likely explanation for the lack of attribution is that the pranksters grew up and are more than a little embarrassed about their adolescent exploits. I know that I would probably not fess up to some of the nonsense I got up to phreaking/hacking in junior high and high school despite the statue of limitations passing long, long ago.
Could also be that they revel in the mystery.
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#18I was interested in finding out how the intrusion was accomplished, but the article devotes only a few words to explaining that, in a sentence that makes no grammatical sense. What does it mean to place a dish antenna “between the transmitter tower”?
The TV stations used a big transmitter up on the Sears tower for their real signal. That got fed by a little microwave dish antenna pointed out to a relay "in the city". So if you could get an angle on the dish with a transmitter of sufficient power, you could feed your own signal into whatever channel.
"Hauling equipment up to the roof without getting caught" and "having haul-able equipment" are the technical challenges. IIRC they used a ~900Mhz system for that and even today I would have to spend some money to put a video signal out in that range, and another chunk to do it at any power.
In 1987 someone had to creatively borrow some very high priced kit to do that.
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#19A compilation of news reports at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs
"Captain Midnight" jammed HBO for almost 5 minutes in 86: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_sig...
Re: The Max Headroom Incident
#20For anyone wondering, I recently re-watched the Max Headroom series & movie, and it still holds. I recommend you check it out, even if you hadn't seen it before.
The movie is an excellent piece of early cyberpunk. They were doing the "operator get me out of here" two decades before The Matrix. The British TV interview show is meh. The American/ABC remake even more meh.
I celebrate the guy's entire catalog, anyway, let's get down to business - If you like Max Headroom, another great classic that you may or may not remember from that era is Alien Nation (which also stood the test of time)