Zombies Attack Austin!

Who in their right mind would dare hack a road sign with zombie warnings? Well, apparently some people in Austin—probably some pesky University of Texas students according to a local traffic controller:

Jones, who has one of only two keys to the locked access panels on the portable signs, said that the hacker broke into the panels on each sign and bypassed the passwords before leaving five different zombie messages and even changing one of the passwords. Jones said he had to wait until 8 a.m. to call the manufacturing company to figure out how to override the hacker’s work.

He speculated that the hacker could be a computer genius from UT.

Yes, kids. You too can be a computer genius . You should never hack a road sign as part of a prank. But what if you know that there really are Zombies ahead? What then?? Apparently, while most road sign control pads are placed in a lock box, that box is rarely actually locked. And while most road signs are under password protection, that password is most generally just the default code "DOTS"—or you can easily reset the password by holding "shift" and "control" while typing "DIPY" (so that it just defaults to "DOTS" again). Of course, it makes sense that road signs aren't all that protected. Most of us would hope that you wouldn't be such a jackass as to take swap useful information for some joke about ninjas and/or pirates. [iHacked via Geekologie]