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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
[mystery] MuchMusic hacked? Phreak615?
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

[mystery] MuchMusic hacked? Phreak615?

Caught this new blog post at dabbler.ca explaining a bit about a mystery occurance that's been going on for a while now (since April 13?)...

Phreak615 - the plot thickens

In a nutshell: "Phreak615" hacked the MuchMusic broadcast and overlaid his own video. It appeared live, and on reruns, so leading theory is that it's marketing or an ARG, not a legitimate hacking. Lots of people have already been looking into it, word from MM has been mum. On being called out, Phreak challenged this person (Matsuto77) to pick up something at a location, which was reported to have nothing, but phreak posted photos of his mask in a shop window, supposedly the item to look for. Another theory is that it's Devon Soltendieck (a MM VJ). Another commentor referenced in both blogs is "ceasar-cipher" who has a blog also dedicated to this mystery.
- Phreak615.com (blogspot)
- Phreak615's youtube profile

- Matsuto77's blog
- caesar-cipher's blog

a few hack examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYfRw9KC2qA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGEsVNAmZY0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NWqmWieskE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_br0Rl1Hd04

Just thought it might be something interesting to follow... appears to be drumming up some controversy in youtube with responses and theories. At the very least, annoying people Razz
Also could be nothing.

It seems similar to another discussion at UF a while back about broadcast hijacking, but I can't remember its title or where/when it happened Confused...
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:31 pm
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kosmopol
I Never Tire of My Own Voice


Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 3167

It reminds me a little on Wyoming Incident.

PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:32 pm
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redct
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I'm putting my money on marketing. If there was an actual broadcast hijack, the communications regulations would be all over the place.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:33 pm
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thebruce
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yeah Mad Morton mentioned that little caveat in his blog.

And WI - I think that's close, but the one I'm thinking of was a guy who supposedly inserted his own video in CBS or CBC or some other network broadcast some time back... dunno. maybe this is kind of a mix inspired by both Razz

or, did WI refer to that broadcast hijack guy? I think that was it... I think I recall people mentioning that hijack in the WI thread.
Anyway... yeah... along those lines
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:39 pm
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redct
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thebruce wrote:
yeah Mad Morton mentioned that little caveat in his blog.

And WI - I think that's close, but the one I'm thinking of was a guy who supposedly inserted his own video in CBS or CBC or some other network broadcast some time back... dunno. maybe this is kind of a mix inspired by both Razz

or, did WI refer to that broadcast hijack guy? I think that was it... I think I recall people mentioning that hijack in the WI thread.
Anyway... yeah... along those lines


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_signal_intrusion
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:41 pm
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coffeegirl18
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Location: Kingston, Ontario, Canada

A Muchmusic ARG would be fun. *crosses fingers*
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 12:12 pm
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KLind
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This looks interesting. Very Happy

PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 10:54 pm
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Nighthawk
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 14 Jul 2007
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You know, this hacking is now mentioned at the bottom to the Wikipedia entry for "viral marketing":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

Quote:
In April of 2008, strange videos began appearing on Canadian music video channel MuchMusic. The videos, made by a blogger known only as phreak615, interfered with the station's signal, especially during the station's orignal programming. The videos, all of which were under 10 seconds long, pointed to phreak615.com, the URL of the signal hacker's blog. According to his blog, phreak615 is a self-proclaimed pop culture activist who apparently works for MuchMusic. It is believed that the incident could be an example of viral marketing being used to promote new programming at MuchMusic. The videos and signal hacking may have been inspired by the Max Headroom pirating incident that occured on Chicago's WTTW 11 in 1987, as phreak615 had posted a link to that video on his blog.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:27 am
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KLind
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New video on his site http://phreak615.blogspot.com/2008/04/fly-coop.html

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:21 pm
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thebruce
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Joined: 16 Aug 2004
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Location: Kitchener, Ontario

there are some frames that aren't just effective noise... but text can't be made out. captured 10 frames, here are 3...
clips-0079.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   3.45KB
 Viewed   1141 Time(s)

clips-0079.jpg

clips-0135.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   1.9KB
 Viewed   1130 Time(s)

clips-0135.jpg

clips-0621.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   1.84KB
 Viewed   1130 Time(s)

clips-0621.jpg

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:02 pm
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KLind
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Joined: 22 Apr 2007
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thebruce wrote:
there are some frames that aren't just effective noise... but text can't be made out. captured 10 frames, here are 3...


Wonder if that's why it wasn't on Youtube. Maybe future videos will have a clearer message.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:36 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
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KLind wrote:
thebruce wrote:
there are some frames that aren't just effective noise... but text can't be made out. captured 10 frames, here are 3...


Wonder if that's why it wasn't on Youtube. Maybe future videos will have a clearer message.

It is on Youtube, but no clearer:


YouTube: Link


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:39 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
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Location: Kitchener, Ontario

the blog feed as a link to an MP4 attachment which is higher quality, but the text is still too obscured.

http://www.blogger.com/video-play.mp4?contentId=adbae7205c113583&type=video/mp4
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:07 pm
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thebruce
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Joined: 16 Aug 2004
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Location: Kitchener, Ontario

heh, article on canoe.ca

someone's not too happy Razz

what I found kind of funny is that he's berating MM for considering its fans dumb, when he describes the email he received:

Quote:
Even an e-mail that Phreak615 says was sent out to Much staffers is obviously fake. Note the "Memo to all staff" salutation underlined in green — that's Microsoft Office's built-in grammar checker flagging a sentence fragment, and a dead giveaway that the e-mail in that image was composed in the window shown, not received by the user.

The email:



Clearly he doesn't understand outlook Razz. The green underline didn't come with the email he received (which is plain text), it was added because he's reading the email in Outlook.
doof. no offense. Laughing


Just realized the image itself was sent by Phreak615 slinked - implying he wrote the content of the message in that window, rather than receiving the email as is - that's not a screenshot from the article-writer's inbox, it's a screen shot from Phreak615. bah. now who's the doof. Razz haha

anyway, interesting nonetheless.
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:40 am
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thebruce
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Location: Kitchener, Ontario

wow triple post...

so there's been some back-and-forth on the main blog article reporting this, with this matsuto77 person (who has changed his name to Mad Mark)

he's still in it, and phreak615 still sees to be 'picking' on him for some reason. The latest blog entry of Phreak615 - Book Smarts has this image of a book with missing letters... which obviously spells "ebay"

A quick search will result in Phreak615's profile on ebay where he has a listing "Phreakin it Real".
Nothing for sale, but there are two images:




They appear to potentially be the blueprints for this year's MMVA stage.
Last year's stage appears similar in design, and can be seen here.

thats pretty much it so far...
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:01 pm
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