• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WCHQ LP Hacked

greg.hahn

greg.hahn

Anti-Trump protesters hacked local LP WCHQ and played an offensive anti-Trump song (YG & Nipsey Hussle. “FDT (F*** Donald Trump) on Friday afternon, the day of Trump's inauguration.

Several other stations across the country were similarly hacked at the same time, including "El Jefe" WMGC Nashville (810 AM) and KCGF-LP 100.5 San Angelo, TX.

Reportedly the access was obtained through software the station uses for the Emergency Alert System. I'm not sure what kind of sotware that would be, or what purpose it would serve other than to give an operator access to the air feed to read live EAS alerts. But that would be dumb, because you can just let the EAS alerts go through and play as received. You don't need such access. So I don't know what they had. But sounds like it bit them in the butt.

https://www.hackread.com/radio-station-hacked-with-f-donald-trump-song/
 
It turns out the earlier report regarding EAS equipment was incorrect. Station manager Kelly Weisbach was said to have told Radio World that the Barix Extreamer which the station uses for an STL is what was hacked. The same was true for all the hacked stations.

That makes perfect sense. If a station is using a Barix for an STL and you can guess the password, you can take over the radio station audio feed from anywhere in the world.
 
Info from the KBA today:

We understand that the unauthorized access to the devices may be due, in part, to instances where the licensee fails to set a password for devices with no default password, or to re-set default passwords on the Barix device.

Oops! If that's the case, they weren't exactly "hacked."
 
Last edited:
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom