broadcast signal intrusion

Notable incidents

Soviet pirate broadcasting (1960s–1980s)

Broadcast signal intrusions were a common practice in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s due to the absence of and high demand for any non-government broadcasting. As early as 1966, there was a report of an incident in the city of Kaluga where an 18-year-old had broadcast a hoax announcement that nuclear war had broken out with the United States.

In the mid-1970s so many pirates were operating around the city of Arkhangelsk, especially at night, that local people were urged to telephone reports of violators to a special number.

Hijackers using call signs such as "Cucumber", "Radio Millimeter", "Green Goat", "Fortune", and others, would overpower the signal on relay stations for wired radio networks to transmit their programming, or transmit into wired radio networks during gaps in regular programming. Even though the incidents appear to have been fairly common according to reports from the BBC, most were not publicly acknowledged for policy reasons. Reports in newspapers typically referred to the hijackers as "radio hooligans broadcasting drivel, rudeness, vulgarity, uncensored expressions, and trashy music". State news organizations also spread propaganda against such pirate broadcasters, claiming that they had interfered with a state frequency used by Aeroflot, "preventing a doctor in an air ambulance from transmitting information about a patient".

Southern Television (1977)

On November 26, 1977, an audio message, purporting to come from outer space and conveyed by an individual named 'Vrillon' of the 'Ashtar Galactic Command', was broadcast during an ITN news bulletin on Southern Television in the United Kingdom. The intrusion did not entirely affect the video signal but replaced the program audio with a six-minute speech about the destiny of the human race and a disaster to affect "your world and the beings on our worlds around you." The IBA confirmed that it was the first time such a transmission had been made.

"Telewizja Solidarność" (TV Solidarity) (1985)

In September 1985, four astronomers at Poland's University of Toruń (Zygmunt Turło, Leszek Zaleski, Piotr Łukaszewski, and Jan Hanasz) used a ZX Spectrum home computer, a synchronizing circuit, and a transmitter to superimpose messages in support of the labor movement Solidarność (Solidarity) over state-run television broadcasts in Toruń, including an episode of 07 zgłoś się. The messages read "Dość podwyżek cen, kłamstw I represji. Solidarność Toruń" ("Enough price increases, lies, and repressions. Solidarity Toruń") and "Bojkot wyborów naszym obowiązkiem." ("It is our duty to boycott the election", referring to the Sejm elections of 1985) with the Solidarity logo. The four men were eventually discovered and were charged with "possession of an unlicensed radio transmitter and publication of materials that could cause public unrest". At their sentencing, the judge noted their prize-winning work in the Polish scientific community and gave each of them probation and a fine of the equivalent of US$100 each (or 3,000,000 old złoty, 300 PLN in today's currency).

Captain Midnight (1986)

At 12:32 a.m. Eastern Time on April 27, 1986, HBO (Home Box Office) had its satellite signal feed from its operations center on Long Island in Hauppauge, New York interrupted by a man calling himself "Captain Midnight". The interruption occurred during a presentation of The Falcon and the Snowman. The intrusion lasted between 4 and 5 minutes and was seen by viewers along the East Coast. The man, who during the interruption also threatened to hijack the signals of Showtime and The Movie Channel, was later caught and identified as John R. MacDougall of Ocala, Florida. He was prosecuted shortly thereafter. Authorities were tipped off by a man from Wisconsin in a phone booth at a rest area of Interstate 75 in Gainesville, Florida. The man filing the report said that he overheard MacDougall bragging about the incident.

MacDougall's guilt was confirmed by an FCC investigation that showed he was alone at Central Florida Teleport at the time of the incident, and a recording of the jamming video showed that the text was created by a character generator at that location. He was charged with transmitting without a radio license in violation of 47 U.S.C. § 301. MacDougall pled guilty and was fined $5,000 and served a year of probation. Ambiguity about whether the 47 USC 301 charge was applicable since the transmitter had a license resulted in the passage of 18 U.S.C. § 1367 which made satellite jamming a felony.

MacDougall was able to perform the intrusion while working a second job as a master control operator at a satellite teleport in Florida, where he worked to make ends meet due to declining income from his satellite TV equipment business. He stated that he did it because he was frustrated with HBO's service rates and that it was hurting his business selling satellite dishes (hence his second job at the teleport). The message, placed over SMPTE color bars, broadcast by MacDougall read:

The Playboy Channel religious message (1987)

A broadcast of the movie "Three Daughters" on the Playboy Channel was disrupted with a text-only religious message on Sunday, September 6, 1987. The message read, "Thus sayeth the Lord thy God: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." (From the Bible verses Exodus 20:8 and Matthew 4:17.)

Thomas Haynie, an employee of the Christian Broadcasting Network, was convicted of satellite piracy in connection with the incident. Haynie, who pleaded his innocence, was the first person convicted under a new federal law which had made satellite hacking a felony following the Captain Midnight incident.

According to investigators, it was the religious content of the transmission and the type of equipment used that drew them to CBN. The jamming signal left behind subtle technical clues that were captured on a VHS recording made at the Playboy Channel's uplink at the time of the event – like finding "fingerprints" in the video. After investigators were confident that they identified the brand of transmitter and character generator from the video, they concluded that CBN was the culprit. Haynie, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, was on duty at his job as an uplink engineer at the time of the jamming.

CBN maintained that the FCC's case was entirely circumstantial, since there were no witnesses and the signal could not be traced to a point of origin. During the investigation, experts on both sides attempted to recreate the incident with CBN's equipment. According to CBN spokesman Dino McCann, they were unsuccessful. Furthermore, CBN asserted that there was not enough power for Haynie to jam Playboy's signal but during the trial, government witnesses said the CBN station was capable of interfering with satellite transmissions.

After initially being deadlocked, the jury eventually sided with the prosecution and convicted Haynie on two of six counts. (Haynie was acquitted of similar charges of interfering with the American Exxxtasy channel; a recording of the event was of such poor quality that it was unusable.) Haynie received three years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and 150 hours of community service.

Max Headroom incidents (1987)

On the night of November 22, 1987, an unknown man wearing a Max Headroom mask appeared on the signals of two television stations in Chicago, Illinois. WGN-TV, owned by Tribune Broadcasting, was hijacked first. The intrusion occurred during the sports report on its 9:00 p.m. newscast and lasted about 25 seconds. Next came PBS affiliate WTTW, where the man was seen and heard uttering garbled remarks before dropping his pants, partially exposing his buttocks, and was then spanked with a flyswatter by a woman wearing a French maid costume before normal programming resumed. This second interception occurred at about 11:00 p.m. during an episode of the Doctor Who serial, "Horror of Fang Rock", and lasted almost 90 seconds. None of the individuals responsible for the intrusion have been determined. This incident got the attention of the CBS Evening News the next day and was talked about nationwide. The HBO incident was also mentioned in the same news report.

Falun Gong hijackings (2002)

On February 16, 2002, television signals in the Chinese city of Anshan were briefly hijacked by members of the Falun Gong religious movement in order to clarify the events of the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident of the previous year. On March 5, 2002, further intrusions took place on cable television channels in the cities of Changchun and Songyuan, protesting persecution by the Chinese government. Different sources vary as to the length of the intrusion, with figures cited including 10 minutes, 50 minutes or even as long as four hours. In September of the same year, 15 people were convicted of roles in the incident and were given prison terms of up to 20 years. On September 9, Falun Gong followers again disrupted broadcasting, this time targeting nationwide satellite broadcasting. By 2010, several of those involved had reportedly died in prison.

WBLI and WBAB (2006)

On the morning of Wednesday, May 17, 2006, the signal of Babylon, New York, FM radio station WBAB was hijacked for about 90 seconds while the signal jammers broadcast the song "Nigger Hatin' Me" by 1960s-era white supremacist country singer Johnny Rebel. Roger Luce, the station's morning host, said at the time, "I've never seen this in 22 years on this radio station [...] Whatever that was [...] it was very racist." Former program director John Olsen said, "This was not some child's prank, this was a federal offense."

The hijack was likely accomplished by overpowering the studio transmitter link (STL) signal to the transmitter in Dix Hills. A signal hijacking with the same song happened to WBLI, WBAB's sister station, about two weeks earlier on a Sunday night.

Zombie apocalypse Emergency Alert System hijackings (2013)

On February 11, 2013, Great Falls, Montana, CBS affiliate KRTV had their Emergency Alert System hijacked with an audible message warning viewers that "the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living." Later the same night in Marquette, Michigan, and the early morning hours in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the same type of hijacking and reference to a "zombie invasion" was made over the EAS systems of CBS affiliate WKBT-DT, ABC affiliate WBUP and PBS member station WNMU during primetime programming. Shortly afterward, PBS affiliate KENW of Portales, New Mexico, was struck with a similar hacking incident, repeating similar information regarding zombies.

MNCTV and TPI (2015)

In 2014, Tutut announced plans for relaunch of the original TPI, although it has yet to materialize. In October 2015, MNCTV's Jakarta frequencies suffered from broadcast signal intrusions in which color bars reading "TPI 37 UHF" appeared for a brief period of time. Tutut's TPI denied the responsibility for the hijacking.

"The Winker's Song (Misprint)" incidents (2017)

In June and July 2017, Mansfield 103.2 FM, a local radio station in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England in the United Kingdom, had its signal intruded at least eight times during outside broadcasts. During these intrusions, "The Winker's Song (Misprint)" was played. As of July 2017, the perpetrator had not been identified.

During armed conflicts

Arab-Israeli conflict

During the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel overloaded the satellite transmission of Hezbollah's Al Manar TV to broadcast anti-Hezbollah propaganda. One spot showed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with crosshairs superimposed on his image, followed by three gunshots and a voice saying "Your day is coming," and shots of the Israeli Air Force destroying targets in Lebanon.

During the 2014 Gaza War, Hamas hacked Channel 10 (Israel) with messages threatening Israelis to stay longer in the bomb shelters and showing pictures of the wounded Gazans.

On March 11, 2016, private satellite dish owners in Israel watching HaAh HaGadol (the Israeli version of Big Brother) on Channel 2 had their show interrupted by propaganda videos from Hamas. The disruption lasted a little over three and a half minutes.

On November 30, 2016, as a form of protest against Israel's newly implemented "Mu'adhin bill" which called for the silencing of the adhan (the Islamic call to prayer), a group of hackers from Saudi Arabia invaded the transmissions of the Israeli TV networks Channel 2 and Channel 10 with messages related to the November 2016 Israel fires accompanied by the adhan as background audio. Additionally, the visual content of the hijack included a message written in Hebrew alluding to divine retribution and punishment from God. An investigation found that only satellites in mostly Arab communities were affected.

During the 2025 Twelve-Day War, Iran's state television service IRIB was hacked by Israeli hackers who aired a footage of women protesting against hijab and cutting their hair along with a background voice calling for public outrage against the "regime". Reportedly the intrusion was done with the help of satellites, as a result, affecting only the satellite television viewers.

Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–2023)

On February 26, 2022, the hacker group Anonymous, as part of the cyber war declared to Russia, hacked several pro-Kremlin TV channels (Channel One Russia, Russia-1 and others), broadcasting a poem written by the singer Monatik about the Russo-Ukrainian war with its footage and Ukrainian music.

On May 9, 2022, during Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russian TV listings were hacked to display information about Russia's war crimes, and to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine using various messages. The names of every TV station were changed to "blood is on your hands" and other phrases used in the TV listings included "television and the authorities are lying" and "your hands are covered in blood from the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians and their children".

On June 5, 2023, Russian radio stations in regions bordering Ukraine were hacked, broadcasting a fake radio address claiming to be from Putin, declaring martial law, a nationwide military mobilization, and for residents to evacuate deeper into Russia.

Other incidents

Television signal intrusions

From October 1 to 4, 1959, the entire video portions of the first three 1959 World Series games on then-primary CBS/secondary NBC-ABC station WLUC-TV in Marquette, Michigan had its Lathrop microwave relay station blacked out by a disgruntled former WLUC employee who wanted to bring back his engineering job after being fired by the station's manager John Borgen for "insubordination reasons". Borgen said in a statement that the former employee, 36-year-old Harold William Lindgren of Marquette, suffered mental health issues and planned his own revenge to the station by swiping a steel wool scouring pad from his wife's sink and drove thirty five miles south to Lathrop on the evening of September 30, before climbing a fence around the transmitter and used a ball-point pen before stuffing the pad into a pipe of the relay equipment the following evening, calling the interruption "a diabolical plot". The hijacks immediately led engineers from Chicago and Green Bay to investigate for four days before Lindgren was quickly arrested by Michigan State Police and immediately facing a possible four-year jail sentence. Lindgren told court officials that he wanted to "jam the signal" over his frustration at Borgen for firing Lindgren several weeks beforehand on September 10, 1959.

On October 27, 1968, a 25-year-old technician from San Bernardino, California, was arrested by local authorities after he accidentally hijacked the off-air airwaves of then-new ABC affiliate KPLM-TV in Palm Springs, California, replacing the station's test pattern shortly after the station was signed off, with a stag film for approximately 15 minutes. The man, Allen Veatch, was alone in the studio that morning when he watched the stag videotape in the studio, which led to its signal feeding into the line going to the commercial cable company distribution center which was still hooked up, and the program was shown to the public.

In 1971, several television stations in Manila complained of unauthorized broadcasts of pornographic films–known in local vernacular as bomba films–being aired on their channels at midnight after the stations' sign-off. They were receivable only in Manila and in the neighboring city of Makati, indicating the usage of a weaker transmitter, and were of poor quality and had no sound. Leonardo Garcia of the Radio Control Office hypothesized that the culprit was either misusing television equipment or was an "amateur electronic buff", and wryly observed, "Whoever he is, he must be a good Catholic. He stopped showing bombas during Holy Week."

Cable network feed intrusions

On October 20, 1979, a Cablevision headend in Canada replaced Channel 10's message channel's feed with a couple of minutes from the pornographic film Deep Throat. According to the community channel president Ron East, the mistake happened due to a young volunteer operator showing off a rock festival video to his friends that had footage from the film on it accidently broadcasting it by pressing the wrong button.

On April 27, 1983, a Cox Cable headend in Santa Barbara, California, replaced the video feed of KNXT's Channel 2 Eyewitness News with softcore pornography for 15 minutes, while audio of the newscast was still presented throughout its entirety. Tom Pratt, the programmer manager for Cox, said that the hijack was affected for not all of the viewership's households, but added that the "incident was not accidental". Cox contacted the local authorities to investigate the situation. Despite staff at Cox receiving no reports or complaints from the public (with the exception of two journalists who witnessed the incident), reports from the following morning stated that the employees did witness the movie beforehand.

On May 2, 2007, a Comcast headend replaced six minutes of a rerun of the Handy Manny episode "Pet Problem/Felipe's New Job" on the Disney Channel with hardcore pornography for viewers in Lincroft, New Jersey. Comcast stated it was investigating the event's cause, but did not announce its findings to the public.

On February 1, 2009, a Comcast headend in Tucson, Arizona, replaced NBC affiliate KVOA's signal with graphic footage from the pornographic video Wild Cherries 5 in portions of Arizona for 28 seconds, interrupting Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers during the fourth quarter. Comcast claimed "Our initial investigation suggests this was an isolated malicious act. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine who was behind this." KVOA also announced that it will be investigating the incident. On February 4, 2011, 38-year-old former Cox Cable employee Frank Tanori Gonzalez of Marana was arrested by the FBI and local police about the case. Later that October, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to two counts of computer tampering and was sentenced to three years of probation, as well as a $1,000 fine to the Arizona attorney general's anti-racketeering fund.

In the morning hours of March 16, 2010, Raleigh area Time Warner Cable's transmission from both Kids and Kids Preschool On Demand channels in the Research Triangle counties of Johnston, Wake, Wayne, and Wilson in North Carolina (including the cities of Raleigh and Goldsboro) was replaced by Playboy TV for approximately two hours, while other TWC cable systems in the area outside the four counties only showed a black screen. An executive from TWC stated to local news station WRAL that it "was a technical malfunction that caused the wrong previews to be shown" on their kids' on-demand channels.

Satellite feed intrusions

On September 7, 2012, the Disney Junior block on Disney Channel was interrupted on Dish Network, replacing six minutes of Lilo & Stitch with a portion of a hardcore pornographic movie.

Radio signal intrusions

The BBC's radio broadcast of a musical program on October 14, 1941 was interrupted by Nazi Germans shouting false statements to Britons on "how much money Winston Churchill has been paid by Germans," and saying that "the Germans have being swindled and was led up the garden path and sold to America." The voice led to a target of "Harassing Harry", a counterpart of Russia's "Ivan the Terrible" who heckles German broadcasters becoming a welcome diversion to British broadcasting. The wavering intensity of the voice often gave a similar quality voice of Donald Duck which led some listeners to name him "Von Donald." Later, the heckler began interspersing comments between British news bulletins from the BBC. Some of the hecklings include the voice telling listeners to wait for the following day in the headline on the Germans keeping up their pressure on Ukraine, and the voice saying that a big offensive swept over Northern France has been shot down.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation made major headlines on November 24, 1943 after reporting a 90-second interruption of a Nazi man speaking rapidly over a CBS Radio program on WOKO-AM in Albany, New York. The FBI later stated that the interruption was reported as a mistake in telephone transmission "or possibly from an enemy broadcast" and reported that there is no "direct allegation" of the latter.

On two occasions in 1983, one on May 27 and another in early July, WUWU minority shareholder Bob Allen hijacked his own station in a feud with majority owner Ron Chmiel, who had fired him for multiple reasons. Allen was acquitted on predural grounds.

In April 2016, multiple radio stations in the United States were hacked in order to broadcast an explicit podcast about the furry fandom. The hackers targeted individual Barix audio streaming devices that were findable on the search engine Shodan, logged into them, and locked out the owners while airing the podcast.

On November 10, 2017, intruders broadcast ISIS propaganda for 30 minutes on the Malmö station of Swedish radio network Mix Megapol. A spokesperson for Bauer Media Group, Mix Megapol's owners, stated that "somebody interfered with our frequency using a pirate transmitter" and that they would contact the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority.