W for Washington State
posted Saturday Nov 13, 2010 by Scott Ertz
Have you seen the movie V for Vendetta? In the film, V runs a video message on November 5th to honor the attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament. This year, a hacker at Washington State decided to give November 5th a new reason to be remembered.
A student hacked into the classroom presentation system for the school and broadcast a message, dressed as V, addressing the issue of campus squirrels and student apathy towards the issue. The video played every hour on screens in about 12 classrooms until the problem was righted by campus support in the early afternoon.
To find out why it took them until the afternoon to fix the problem and to see the video that played, hit the break.
According to the school, the software was pretty sophisticated. In some cases it took removing the hard drive to stop the automated message. To illustrate the detail of the software, it was able to raise and lower screens and turn on and off projectors.