I was watching MOD on MuchMusic the other day until I saw a series of random commercials featuring people filiming on a webcam. But there’s one “obvious” person that has these characteristics: He’s wearing green goggles, a green cowboy hat and a blue partial mask that one has eyes and nose parts. He’s holding a sign that says, “THIS IS THE NEW REALITY – Phreak615.com”.
There was some speculation going on about this viral advertising. Phreak615 decided to hack and intercept every television show that was aired on MuchMusic. This reminded me when there was a series of Obay advertisments popping around in my neighbourhood and it wasn’t until later that these ads were produced by Ontario Colleges – showing awareness for parents who is considering post-secondary opportunities for their children. Earlier, it reminded me when YTV’s The Zone (and the entire YTV network) back in 2001 was hacked by some kind of odd enemy named the “Freaky Fowl” (or something like that). This is from a wikipedia article:
“At one point during their tenure, a bizarre plotline emerged involving electronic insects known as yokomites that were under the control of a mysterious chicken-man named Fiendly Fowl. They were created by Fowl to destroy the station, should his demand to be given the station was ignored. At the end, there was an animated comic where Pat and Jenny went into the yokomite’s lair to defeat them. The hand in the toilet was “killed” saving them.”
Many bloggers, including mine were circulating rumours about Obay. Even many message boards has their own point of view about the Obay ads.
Back to the Phreak615 craze, there is a blog by the alias of “Phreak615″ and he unravels his plot to hack this year’s MuchMusic Video Awards, which will take place on June 15th, 2008. This is what he explicitly states on his blog:
“It’s no secret that I am going to hack the MMVAs.
It’s no secret that if you send me a video I’ll put you into the MMVAs
It’s no secret that MuchMusic and Mad Mark have the same initials.
And it’s no secret that CDs have a better sound quality than cassette.
CDs Nuts!”
Is that guy is some kind of retro brainiac who thinks that cassette or vinyl produces better sound quality than CDs? Or is he some kind of terrorist leader? Anyways, I was extremely slow on trying to get all the details on Phreak615, but I was able to find some videos on how MuchMusic suffered the effects of Phreak615. I spent almost day and night trying to research some information and provided an APB on Phreak615 until I realized that Phreak615 is some kind of MMVA advertisement teaser (or something like that).
EDIT:This is phreak615’s full and detailed information about himself (to view the original post, please go here):
So ADAM, BOBBY & HeatVision_and_Jack are wondering how I’m managing these phreaks. Sorry my little Phreaks and Phreakets but you’d need direct access to make it happen. That said; send me your videos, if they’re good I’ll make you famous.
First off, gone are the days of being able to simply “take over” an analogue broadcast frequency and hijack the feed that way – as you can see in my earlier blog here. Everything is digital now. That makes it harder for most, but in fact, easier for me.
Basically, the tech guys here have their thumbs up their asses. New technology plus old tech staff equals wiiiiiiiiiiiide open access.
I have direct access to our digital media server (the source for all outgoing broadcasts). I wired up a custom network cable similar to a RJ-45 cross-over cable and hooked it into one of the spare networking ports. Normally these ports are disabled or at least secured but as I said earlier, this is relatively new and not everyone is up to speed from a security standpoint. Plus, I’m sure they never anticipated me.
Anyways, I ran that cable out to a standard D-link wireless router (works better with Macs than Linkys) and set up a “hidden” wifi network. Now all I need to do is park my car across the street from the building and I can upload any audio or video directly to the server. The actual tricky part is the script that automatically runs an override to the current broadcast stream at pre-set times. Coincidently these times are when I’m out of the office.
Now I can upload and inject video snippets into the main broadcast feed from my wireless laptop pretty much when ever I’m feeling a little saucy. At least for now. I’m giving this whole thing a week tops before my little work around gets discovered.
Anyway, without direct access to the server there’s no way anyone could ever hope to gain access. So sorry. But again, like I said I’ll load your stuff in if you send it to me.
Anyways, I have some evidence that you may find (somewhat) disturbing – in the form of youtube videos! Right now, I’m in the process of trying to unravel and try to nick Phreak615’s operation once and for all! I wonder how loyal MuchMusic viewers will think about this…lol Who knows? Perhaps “Phreak615″ will appear on Road Wars!
[...] I’m still trying to find on how electronic signsdisplays work from this particular series, but over time it’ll be on that particular channel….lol Anyways, enjoy the videos that are my favourites, especially that phreak615 should know how a Vinyl record works (if you want to refer to my blog posting on that, click here)! [...]
[...] stumbled upon the latest posting on Dabbler.ca about what Phreak615 is – it turns out to be a lousy contest dubbed, “Phind the Phreak” (or in my editorial [...]
[...] I’m still trying to find on how electronic signsdisplays work from this particular series, but over time it’ll be on that particular channel….lol Anyways, enjoy the videos that are my favourites, especially that phreak615 should know how a Vinyl record works (if you want to refer to my blog posting on that, click here)! [...]
Acme School of Stuff « Simon Tonekham’s Blog
May 7, 2008 at 11:41 am
[...] stumbled upon the latest posting on Dabbler.ca about what Phreak615 is – it turns out to be a lousy contest dubbed, “Phind the Phreak” (or in my editorial [...]
The sarcastic conclusion: Phreak 615 is nothing but a lousy contest « Simon Tonekham’s Blog
May 16, 2008 at 5:30 pm