The week at SecureWorld always ends the same way—with a little game of group trivia.
It is for bragging rights because there are no prizes. However, there are often surprises, like the question that popped up today. "What happened on this day, April 27, in 1986?"
Hmmm. Silence.
Then... surprise.
This is the anniversary of HBO's original hack by an engineer who came to be known as "Captain Midnight" because that is what millions of HBO viewers saw on their screens, as he complained about the price:
We'll let Wikipedia take it from here:
On April 27, 1986, American electrical engineer and business owner John R. MacDougall, using the pseudonym Captain Midnight, jammed the Home Box Office (HBO) satellite signal on Galaxy 1 during a showing of the film The Falcon and the Snowman. He broadcast a message lasting four and a half minutes, seen by the eastern half of the United States (accounting for more than half of HBO's 14.6 million subscribers at the time) protesting HBO's rates for satellite dish owners, which he considered too expensive. MacDougall was working at his second job as an operations engineer at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station in Ocala, Florida, and fought with a technician at HBO's communications center in Hauppauge, Long Island, for control of the transmission. The technician attempted to increase uplink power but gave up because of the risk of damaging the satellite. MacDougall eventually abandoned his control of the satellite."
In the end, he paid a $5,000 fine and was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation for the 4-1/2 minute signal hack.
Now those were the old school days of hacking, were they not?
Friday Trivia at SecureWorld: always full of surprises!
Image credit: Wikipedia
