"Instead of the normal recordings telling people to either wait or cross the street, pedestrians heard the spoofed voices of billionaire tech CEOs. A fake Mark Zuckerberg said at one Menlo Park intersection that people would not be able to stop AI from 'forcefully' being inserted 'into every facet of your conscious experience.'"
"Government emails and text messages obtained by WIRED through public records requests show how the cities of Menlo Park, Redwood City, Palo Alto, and later Seattle and Denver scrambled to respond to the crosswalk button tampering."
"In Redwood City, then-city manager Melissa Diaz quizzed staff about who should be blamed for the incident. 'We need to understand who should be accountable for the security of these systems and what we can do to hold either staff or the external responsible party accountable,' she wrote in an email to colleagues in the days after the hack."
In April, a cyberattack targeted street intersections in Silicon Valley, using weak default passwords to upload recordings that spoofed tech CEOs' voices. Pedestrians heard altered messages instead of standard crosswalk instructions. Cities like Menlo Park and Redwood City faced embarrassment and scrutiny over their security practices. Communications revealed a scramble to address the incident, with officials questioning accountability for the security of these systems. The attack highlighted significant vulnerabilities in widely used technology, prompting discussions on responsibility and future security measures.
Read at WIRED
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