So I was watching the local nightly news during dinner when the EBS (Now called EAS, emergency alert system, for you old folks) kicks off during the weather forecast followed by the sound of Rush Limbaugh’s voice. We are of course all fans of Rush Limbaugh out where in real America, but that shouldn’t happen. Hearing the Limbaugh show and watching the weather guy, that ain’t right. Now as bizarre as that is one might be inclined to simply write it of as an accidental flip of the switch by some tech dude hit’n a little to much of the ganja. But how hard is that to do, accidently or otherwise; the switch not the other thing. To connect this (WJHG) to the that (Limbaugh broadcast) through a simple flip of the switch is one thing but even then have an EBS alert during the broadcast is in itself is an unlikely coincidence, and it went on for perhaps 2 minutes.

At the close of the broadcast the announcers acknowledged that this did in fact happen. So I was relived that it wasn’t bad corn beef that we had eaten; you never know these day. And the weathercaster proclaimed that Limbaugh could have his job should he want it, some chuckles on the set and they said they would try to find out the “problem”.

I did a little research afterward to see first if this was an on going thing, is EAS being hacked or triggered erroneously. I found that Wikipedia had listed a few instances here. Vulnerabilities are pointed out in this article published in 2004 by Kevin Poulsen; he’s apparently what’s known as a white hat hacker, that is one who finds and exposes problems in systems so that they may be fixed before the bad guys or ‘black hats’ find them. And finally this story about what happened on at a college campus when their EAS was activated by  and “unauthorized official”.

Now I’m not saying that WJHG was hacked, a victim of a bad switch board, a victim of someone with an agenda, or what. I suspect though we may not find out. Of course that would just make it all the more intriguing.