{"id":155884,"date":"2025-11-27T06:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T06:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/155884\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T06:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T06:09:07","slug":"hackers-hijack-espn-npr-radio-stations-broadcast-obscene-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/155884\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackers Hijack ESPN & NPR Radio Stations, Broadcast “Obscene” Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTwo regional radio<\/a> stations were hacked in the past week and, according to the FCC<\/a>, \u201cbroadcast to the public an attacker inserted audio stream that includes an actual or simulated Attention Signal and EAS alert tones, as well as obscene language, and other inappropriate material.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Sunday, during its broadcast of the Dallas Cowboys\u2019 comeback win against the Philadelphia Eagles, ESPN<\/a> 97.5 in Houston was compromised and listeners heard, according to one report<\/a>, \u201ca loop of fake EAS tones, a racist Country song, and a promo to follow [the hackers] on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe station later posted<\/a> an explanation to listeners who were not only subjected to obscenities, but also missed a game between the Cowboys and their archrivals.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the past hour, there was audio airing on 97.5 FM signal that didn\u2019t come from the radio station. Our signal had been hacked. We are actively trying to rectify the problem. We appreciate the many of you who posted to alert us of the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe prior Wednesday, Richmond, VA-area NPR<\/a> station WVTF, known as \u201cRadio IQ,\u201d was compromised and \u201coffensive material\u201d was broadcast to listeners.<\/p>\n

\n\tRadio IQ later apologized and explained, \u201cThe hacker was able to hijack our backup audio feed from Roanoke to Richmond. We have a sensor that starts the back-up feed when it hears \u2018dead-air\u2019 or silence on the main audio feed. Our engineers have to manually switch back to the main channel when it becomes available again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe station reported, \u201cWe had some dead-air that triggered the switch to back-up audio where an unauthorized audio loop was placed by the hacker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAn FCC<\/a> statement issued today explained the incident as follows: \u201cIt appears that these recent hacks were caused by a compromised studio-transmitter link (STL) \u2014 the broadcast equipment that carries program content from the studio to remote transmitters \u2014 with threat actors often accessing improperly secured Barix equipment and reconfiguring it to receive attacker controlled audio in lieu of station programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis past summer, KRLL in California, Mo., and KPOG in Des Moines, Iowa were reportedly hit<\/a> by similar attacks that compromised their Barix equipment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two regional radio stations were hacked in the past week and, according to the FCC, \u201cbroadcast to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,12484,28397,157,111,139,5863,69,4965],"class_list":{"0":"post-155884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-espn","10":"tag-fcc","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-npr","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-radio"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}