Remember when anti-capitalist hackers uploaded a deepfake of Jeff Bezos's voice to crosswalks in Seattle?
First off, Bezos was apparently not the only deepfake crosswalk out there, and Seattle wasn't the only city hit. The hackers also uploaded deepfakes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and they hit cities across Silicon Valley.
The problem stemmed from an app the cities were using to control the crosswalks called Polara, because the app came with a default administration PIN.
The PIN?
1234
Even if the cities had changed the PIN, these days a four digit PIN can be hacked instantly, unless there are some extra security steps.
Polara has since added a lockout feature that limits users to two password attempts and gave cities the ability to disable connectivity altogether.
Jeneane Crawford, the city of Caltrans' Public Information Officer said,
‘We want to reassure the public that the upgrades have been completed and the additional protections that we implemented should prevent anything similar from happening again.
‘All Caltrans' pedestrian push buttons that were compromised in April have been fixed and are fully operational. The supplier upgraded its software, and Caltrans has implemented the upgrades across all its crosswalk infrastructure.'
None of the cities have commented on how the hack occurred.
Probably because they were still using the default PIN, and it would be embarrassing.
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