Crosswalks hacked to play fake audio of Musk, Zuck, and Jeff Bezos

"Stop, look, and listen" is the standard advice we should allow follow when crossing the road - but pedestrians in some parts are finding that they cannot believe their ears - after a hacker compromised crosswalks to play deepfake audio mocking tech bosses Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.

The fake voices of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, are being played from hacked crossings to the surprise of pedestrians in a number of US cities.

Whoever was responsible for the hacked pedestrian crossing systems has, perhaps sensibly, not identified themselves.

Last year, however, a security researcher made a video describing how easy it was to reconfigure the audio used by crosswalk systems manufactured by a firm called Polara, when installers had not bothered changing the default password or used an easy-to-guess password.

However the hack occurred, social media has been full of videos documenting what the compromised crosswalks have been saying.

For instance, in Palo Alto:

"Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla engineering. You know, they say money can’t buy happiness. And, yeah, OK, I guess that’s true; God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right?”

Meanwhile, in Melo Park, close to Meta's headquarters, a deepfake of the Facebook founder could be heard:

“From undermining democracy, to cooking our grandparents’ brains with AI slop, to making the world less safe for trans people, nobody does it better than us – and I think that’s pretty neat."

In another message, the fake voice of Mark Zuckerberg glibly "assured" pedestrians not to worry about AI encroaching on their lives:

"Hi this is Mark Zuckerberg, but real ones call me the Zuck. You know, it’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcibly insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you — you don’t need to worry because there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Anyway, see ya."

Meanwhile, residents of Seattle were bemused to hear what claimed to be the voice of the founder of the city's richest company, begging for his wealth not to be taxed:

"Hi, I'm Jeff Bezos. This crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime with an important - message. No, you're not imagining it. You know, please don't tax the rich, otherwise all the other billionaires will move to Florida too."

Some of the audio messages also made reference to Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

I think it's clear to say that whoever compromised multiple crosswalk systems across America is no fan of the super-rich. However valid their criticisms of billionaire tech bosses may be, the hacking of pedestrian crossings is ultimately unlikely to make much of a difference beyond making some headlines.

A better way to make your own small protest against companies you feel cause harm is simply not do business with them, and to encourage others to do the same. If you don't like companies making billions, stop giving them your dollars.

The hacking of crosswalks doesn't just cost cash-strapped cities money to clean them up, but is also a public safety hazard which could potentially endanger the lives of pedestrians - particularly those who are blind or have limited vision.

Crosswalks are not the only roadside "hardware" to find themselves the unwelcome target of mischievous hackers. There has, for instance, been a long history of road signs and electronic billboards being compromised to display unauthorised messages, often through the exploitation of default passwords.