Max Headroom Television Signal Hijacking- Chicago 1987, Identity still unknown

[x_files]

Thanks for the feedback, Vespa! I find this so bizarre and creepy as well...and would love to figure out who did this.

From all the information I've found on the internet regarding this incident, I have discovered some interesting theories regarding the responsible party and potential motives/ psychology behind the incident.

Responsible parties:

- In the DI article mentioned above, it was observed that whoever managed to pull this off must have had some awfully sophisticated knowledge about engineering and electronics. According to the article, "WTTW’s uplink antenna was atop the 1,454 foot Sears tower in downtown Chicago, and investigators concluded that the “signal pirate” smothered the legitimate broadcast by sending a more powerful signal to this antenna."

-This person had to have the means to have access to the equipment needed to disrupt the signal. At the time, the right kind of rig needed in this endeavor could be bought for $25,000. It could be rented for a few thousand dollars.

-Even though the perp covered his tracks extremely well, and there was no indication, the authorities believe he either transmitted the incident from the rooftop of an adjacent building, or he used a powerful ground-based transmitter.

- it was speculated "that the piratte operated from somewhere on the
city's North or Northwest Sides, between the two studios and their downtown
transmitters. WGN has studios at 2501 W. Bradly Pl. and transmits from the
top of the John Hancock Center. WTTW's studios are at 5400 N. St. Louis Ave.
and its transmitter is atop the Sears Tower.
From http://www.textfiles.com/magazines/TOLMES/tns14


Motive/Psychology of the incident:

the DI article points out the following motives:
-grudge against WGN
-doing it just because he can
-bringing the social ideology of the Max Headroom televsion series (yes, there was one) to life

Possible preprators that have been named in discussion boards, articles, etc.

-An employee/engineer at WGN who held a grudge against his employer.
- Jonnathon Brandmeier, a Chicago DJ, has been mentioned on message boards as a possible suspect.

When I find more, I will add it.

possibly a prankster?

 

[Moshimo]

Too cool! I can't believe I've never heard of this?? I cleaned the audio as much as I could, check it out..
[video=youtube;dwqSpsR1VSA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwqSpsR1VSA[/video]

Thanks so much for the information on this, SnowAngels
Now instead of digging for clues, I can do that hand thing.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

There was a not dissimilar incursion of a regional TV broadcast in southern England in 1977:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/l...rial-hoax-unexplained-mysteries-a8069926.html

It was a hoax, of course, a prank – and a very sophisticated one for the time, when hacking into a TV network was not the work of just a few minutes with a laptop. Strangely, though, no-one’s ever come forward and claimed responsibility for it, and the episode remains one of those curiosities from the 1970s that will perhaps never be explained.

 

[HMSHood]

I read about this hacking. I would think who did this probably could of been someone who had access to broadcast equipment.

Some people claimed to have been behind this on Reddit, but that has been refuted.

 

[Aslan]

I read about this hacking. I would think who did this probably could of been someone who had access to broadcast equipment.

Some people claimed to have been behind this on Reddit, but that has been refuted.

It hasn't been completely debunked.

I'll give a brief background, just in case anybody here isn't up to date with the details. Somebody posted a story on Reddit a few years ago, claiming to have a very good idea of who was behind it. He put it down to two brothers, whom he refers to as J and K, working with K's girlfriend (probably the woman seen at the end of the video). The brothers were computer whizzes, and J, the elder, had a definite penchant for outlandish jokes. I won't repeat all the details here, but his story was very convincing and had a real ring of truth. It is a wonderful piece of writing that captures the atmosphere of the time brilliantly, and I definitely felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck as I read it! It is well worth reading, whatever conclusion you come to about its contents.
For anyone who's curious, here it is - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/

He refused to give J and K's real names, or even to give too many details that would allow online detectives to put the picture together and identify them.

Several years later, he wrote a follow-up piece in which he claimed to have spoken to experts in broadcast technology who assured him that the incident would have required a lot of advanced and extremely expensive equipment which you wouldn't expect an amateur to own, and that it must have been done by an insider in the TV broadcast industry.
Here is his follow-up piece - https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMy...ew_developments_in_the_max_headroom_incident/

Well, perhaps what he said in his second piece was true... However, the FBI looked into this case, and the agent in charge told a very different story. He actually said that this would only have required fairly basic equipment, combined with a lot of electrical engineering know-how. The equipment required would have been little more than the sorts of things owned by ham radio enthusiasts (I may not have got that exactly right, but it is certainly the gist). The difficulty would have been knowing what you were doing with a soldering iron and some capacitors. The brothers J and K would have fitted right into this description, as their home was apparently chock-full of computer equipment, circuit boards, soldering irons and electrical cabling. (By his own description, the writer of the original article said that "there was very little standing room.")

You can read what the FBI agent said here, in this article - https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pgay3n/headroom-hacker

I don't know about you, but I'm more inclined to believe an FBI expert than some bloke on Reddit. Particularly when the FBI agent is speaking publicly under his own name, and the Redditor is just telling us what "nameless experts" told him, and not even going into much detail about it. I think it's likely that he was simply trying to deflect suspicion from his old friends, and I don't blame him at all! I think he's doing the right thing, even though the statute of limitations has apparently run out on this crime. Being publicly named as the perpetrators would still have some pretty far-reaching repercussions, even without an actual criminal charge being pressed.

Which doesn't mean that J and K actually did it. For all we know, the original Reddit story might just have been made up out of whole cloth, for a laugh! But it rings true to me when I read it, and it is a wonderful, slightly unsettling piece of writing for anyone who loves a good mystery.

No doubt about it, a handful of people out there know the truth. Can you imagine keeping something like this to yourself, even if you had done it all alone? You would be bursting to tell somebody! To think that three people have all been perfectly silent all this time... Hmm, no way! A handful of people out there know, and are preserving their silence in keeping with the type of code of honour which you often find among hacking communities, etc. The hacking community in Chicago at the time would have been pretty small, and it wouldn't have taken long before a few of them began to put two and two together and say, "You know who that guy in the video reminds me of?"

A handful of people know, and they're not telling. Long live the mystery! :toast: