'Exactly how these pirates were able to pull off the overriding of WGN-TV and WTTW-TV's signals is not yet known for certain,' Chicago Radio and Media reported in 2012. But also like today's hacks, the prank required sophisticated technical skills.

Like most of today's acts of cyber-vandalism, the content of Max Headroom interruption was juvenile. It's been nearly 27 years, but the incident remains a mystery. >'Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I.' 'Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky!' the infiltrator announced in a high pitched, distorted voice, referring to the Chicago area sports announcer. This time, the pranksters were able to broadcast their entire video, complete with audio. But two hours later, PBS affiliate station WTTW's broadcast of Doctor Who was similarly interrupted. 'Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I,' the station's sports anchor Dan Roan said when the signal was restored. While the WGN news broadcast was swiftly restored by the station’s engineers, the WTTW incident lasted 90 seconds “and the pirate TV broadcast’s audio, while distorted, was audible to anyone who happened to be tuned in,” Gallagher reports.After about 30 seconds, WGN's technicians were able to override the pirate signal. “The attacker was able to overpower the signals sent by the television studios to a broadcast antenna atop the John Hancock building in Chicago with his or her own signals,” he writes. The creepy incidents were possible due to the analog broadcast technology at that time, according to Sean Gallagher in Ars Technica. At center screen, a person wore a Max Headroom mask….” It was overlain with the screech of a power saw cutting into metal, or a jet engine malfunctioning. At first, it seemed like an equipment malfunction. Without warning, televisions in the area blasted loud radio static. Caroline Haskins describes it this way in Motherboard: “Suddenly, televisions went silent, and their screens went black. Then, a short while later on a different station, WTTW, the television program Dr. The first intrusion occurred with a newscast on WGN around 9pm. Despite an intense investigation by the FCC, the mystery remains unsolved. Kennedy’s death, it is also the day that someone used Max Headroom’s image to hack two Chicago television stations and interrupt their broadcasts.

And while most remember November 22 as the anniversary of the assassination of John F. If you were around in the ’80s, two pop culture events stand out: the birth of MTV and the debut of a fictional artificial intelligence character named Max Headroom.

Max headroom hack