Baby eater gets sympathy from a big fat idiot

The hacker responsible for the words “Stephen Harper Eats Babies” scrolling on the LED display inside a westbound Lakeshore GO Transit train has earned the ultimate reward – a rebuke from Rush Limbaugh, whose radio commentary on May 10 was dedicated to the incident: The softwood lumber agreement, increased border security and more military spending are just the Soviet Canuckistan innovations that Limbaugh’s audience wants to hear about, developments that no name-calling can stop. “On both sides of the border, liberals are strong – but only when attacking their own leaders,” offered Rush. “When it comes to understanding how to defend their country – or even why they should defend it – they’re pretty much useless.” This whole story broke on the blog of National Citizens Coalition president Gerry Nicholls, who wondered “if somebody paid to put up this message or whether it was just the official viewpoint of GO Transit”, which led Exclusive Advertising Inc. to issue a press release emphatically stating the message was “not condoned”. Their claims of tighter protection measures on the antiquated displays proved laughable to those familiar with the finer points of the process of pixel hacking with a cheap infrared keyboard, as explained by Collision Detection blogger Clive Thompson: “Virtually none of the gormless businesspeople who use the signs ever bother to change the password from its factory-installed default – which is usually something like ‘password’ or ‘admin’ or ‘1234′ or whatever.” Moreover, the San Francisco-based computer security group Midnight Research Labs scoffed at claims that a more complex password will prevent this from happening again “since anyone with $4 and a Radio Shack IR kit could intercept and replay the password and any new message that they want”. But while coverage of the baby-eating message generated a few chuckles, before being forgotten, Angry in the Great White North blogger Steve Janke has persisted in his effort to sleuth the hacker down. Janke found a 24-year-old Sheridan College student named “Joshua”, who was linking to online coverage about the incident, stopping just short of confessing to the prank – reader reaction included “I hope Exclusive Advertising sues the ass off that little prick of a commie”. But the accused quickly deleted any implication that he might’ve been responsible, and posted a denial. “You aren’t clever enough to have pulled this off,” concluded Janke, who then took the higher road of delineating how the same technology can help you empty your hotel room minibar for free: “These vulnerabilities will continue to be exploited, and one day, people are going to get seriously hurt.” And clearly, none of these threats would be of much concern if the mainstream media in this city wasn’t so damn liberal.