![]() I remember that word, big, because it piqued my curiosity as to what might be considered big by their standards. They were referring to J planning to do something big over the weekend. I didn’t talk with him directly (me, and the friend of mine that I was there with didn’t really talk to anybody that day), but I did overhear what the others were talking about. J was at the party in the apartment that afternoon. Despite the lack of good grooming and social skills, there was the occasional party every so often, or at least a get together at somebody’s place. They hang out at Denny’s until they’re asked to leave, they can quote Monty Python sketches from memory, and sleep with JRR Tolkien books under their beds where other guys stash porn. People who were into the hacking scene back then were basically the same type of people who are into the hacking scene now…Guys who live in their parent’s basements, charming/brilliant guys who don’t think to bathe often, and often lacking in social skills pretty much across the board. (This was suburban Chicago, from about 1985 until 1993 or so.) They were much older than me (high school and college age), but they put up with me as sort of a novelty I guess.They liked the fact I looked up to them as quasi-role models, at least. When I was in my early teens, a number of my friends were into the local phreaking/hacking scene. The incident received renewed interest in 2010, when a thread was posted to Reddit with this straightforward title: “ I believe I know who was behind the “Max Headroom Incident” that occurred on Chicago TV in 1987.” Those claiming responsibility range from performance artists to anonymous posters on 4chan, but the most likely scenario involves members of Chicago’s ’80s hacking scene. Rumors and rampant speculation about the hackers’ identities have plagued the internet and its precursors for years. Max Headroom wasn’t a danger to public safety, or to a multimillion piece of equipment, Marcus said. There were fears at the time about the harm a satellite jammer might do to infrastructure that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, but concerns about regular television signals were much lower. How are you going to lose sleep over something like that? Nobody dies, and there’s no damage. Momentum slowed: the case lacked evidence, and the threat felt ambiguous. He was back in headquarters in DC, and the FCC investigator in Chicago was too timid to go investigating. ![]() But even with a likely geographical location, Marcus said, finding the resources and manpower needed to continue the investigation was a struggle. And one tip sounded particularly promising, said Marcus, one that pointed at a particular person, someone who worked for a company that had a warehouse-like space in the city, a place that might have played host to the video shoot. That would have already limited it to certain places in the city where the video could have been filmed. ![]() The background looked to be about eight-feet wide, industrial type metal, maybe a roll-down warehouse door, he said. I think the bad guy got close to the receiving end and just transmitted a signal that was received with a stronger strength than the more distant, intended signal, said Marcus. Initially, we checked our internal video sources before thinking about something from the outside. By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over, said Anders Yocum, vice president for corporate communications at Channel 11. Sports reporter Dan Rohn apologized for the interference and continued the sports report. Strutzel said an engineer quickly changed the frequency of the signal that was transmitting the news show to the Hancock building, thus breaking the lock established by the video pirate. ![]() The interfering signal has to be quite strong. You need a significant amount of power to do that, said Robert Strutzel, WGN`s director of engineering, who was reluctant to discuss the prank in detail for fear of providing a ‘how to’ guide for others. They said it would take extremely high-powered equipment to squeeze out the microwave signals that carry the programs from the stations’ Northwest Side studios to downtown skyscrapers, where they are retransmitted to television sets throughout the Chicago area. ![]() Television engineers speculated that the stations had been victimized by a practical joker with an expensive transmitter. Officials of the Federal Communications Commission were not amused as they searched Monday for clues to the identity of the pirate, who somehow managed to override the signals of two television stations in two hours. ![]()
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