FBI and Homeland Security Respond to Shocking Goatse Bomb in Atlanta
The affluent denizens of Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood received a fun treat this week when they looked up at the corner of Peachtree and East Paces Ferry: a famous internet man’s giant, ruddy, gaping spread asshole, displayed on an enormous digital billboard.
The billboard above is one of the thousands of YESCO digital billboards installed across the country. Naturally, it comes with an internet connection. The setup is exactly as insecure as you’d imagine: many of these electronic billboards are completely unprotected, dangling on the public internet without a password or any kind of firewall. This means it’s pretty simple to change the image displayed from a new AT&T offer to, say, Goatse.
The appearance of this unexpected mammoth human asshole alarmed Buckhead residents so much that at least one called 911, WSB-TV reports:
“There’s an electronic billboard that is flashing a naked man,” one woman said in the 911 call. “It’s not actually an emergency; it’s just totally disgusting.” Police say the billboard’s owner temporarily cut power to the billboard.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are now both involved in chasing down the party responsible for briefly putting the graphic butt meme on a billboard—a poster on Reddit already took responsibility:
Hello friends,
We are the Assange Shuffle Collective, and we’re responsible for the happy afternoon entertainment.Ironically, we didn’t realize that Buckhead was an incredibly affluent neighborhood, which makes the whole thing terrifically good fun.Burn the rich.
But what is there to really investigate? The billboard was easy to mess with; the owners basically left the door unlocked and wide open. Not only was this a case of incompetence, but gross negligence: security researcher Dan Tentler tweeted yesterday that he’d tried to warn this very same sign company that their software is easily penetrable by anyone with a computer and net connection and was told they were “not interested.”
Even after the billboard was defaced, Tentler said the company still hadn’t secured its software. Well, it’s 2015, and when you’re “not interested” in the fact that you electronic billboards are easy to hack, well buddy, you’re gonna get Goatse on your billboard.