Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/technology/2025/04/12/silicon-valley-crosswalk-buttons-apparently-hacked-to-imitate-musk-zuckerberg-voices/

199•coloneltcb•6d ago

Comments

jimmydoe•6d ago

this is fun.

it seems most of these crosswalks can be configured via app from https://polara.com/ . So either the authentication was leaked or got physically flashed/hacked?

systemswizard•6d ago

Probably factory defaults exposed to the world

SoftTalker•1h ago

Or a mischievous or disgruntled employee did it, or gave the password to someone.

janalsncm•2h ago

> SIMPLE WIRELESS PROGRAMMING The iNX is easily programmed using our industry-leading Field Service App, available for iOS® & Android® – no expensive software or proprietary devices required! The app allows technicians to configure system settings and sounds, as well as access actionable data on button counts, flashing cycles, and more.

Security not included!

TheAceOfHearts•2h ago

The S in IoT stands for Security.

ryandrake•6d ago

Very nice. Totally harmless prank and it clowns on jerks who deserve a good clowning! Hope the pranksters continue and keep it lowkey so they don’t get caught.

relistan•6d ago

Funny not funny. This person didn’t do any harm but someone else apparently could. They are safety devices that need to operate correctly. Being this hackable is not good news

streetmeat•5d ago

Yeah except the tones and walk messages still play, it just doesn't spam wait over and over at a red. Do you think because it's playing a satirical message blind people will ignore the tones and just start running into traffic?

relistan•4d ago

[flagged]

streetmeat•3d ago

I stand corrected I didn't read it properly.

dboreham•2h ago

Seems like: yes because the hacked message could say "cross quick right now".

googlryas•2h ago

Why does it spam wait over and over? Have you considered that there's a reason?

yellowapple•1h ago

I don't think it even does spam "wait" over and over; I've never heard that in my life. With every such crosswalk I've encountered (in multiple cities across the US) it only says "wait" for each time you press the button.

renewiltord•44m ago

Why don't you explain the reason and then after you've done that, I can inform you that they don't actually do that. I always mash them to DJ up a Wait-Wa-wa-wa-wai-wai-wait-wa-wa-wa-wait. But I always enjoy it when a Hacker News user provides reasons for why something is a certain way only to find that it's not actually that way.

borski•2h ago

The hackers didn’t make them hackable. They were already hackable. Your issue is with the city and/or company, not with the “hackers.”

googlryas•2h ago

The hackers didn't make them hackable, but they did hack them.

borski•1h ago

And did not do anything malicious like remove the actual accessibility tones.

My point isn’t that they are some kind of Robin Hood, but that their actions don’t warrant anger, whereas the insecurity of a public system we rely on… should.

michaelt•1h ago

Apparently hacking is something the denizens of Hacker News disapprove of these days?

krapht•1h ago

Hackers are not crackers.

yellowapple•1h ago

This is one of those rare cases where "hack" and "crack" ain't mutually exclusive.

lupusreal•2h ago

If we could not fuck with accessibility devices which disabled people rely on, that'd be great. Thanks.

lysace•2h ago

Were you severely inconvenienced by this hack? If so, how?

scubbo•2h ago

One does not have to be harmed by an action to be able to call out that it would have harmful impact.

lysace•2h ago

No harmful impact has been called out.

scubbo•2h ago

Not explicitly, but

> which disabled people rely on

is pretty clear implication. But I'll spell it out for you - people with impairment to senses (primarily vision) rely on this infrastructure to know when it's safe to cross a road.

toast0•1h ago

These devices will also often indicate their location when you hold the button. That can help a visually impared person confirm that they're oriented correctly. That use case is likely why these are field programmable; factory programming would be sufficient for limited prompts (wait, begin crossing, count down, clicks and whistles, etc) but not for street names.

ffsm8•2h ago

As far as the messages I heard, they still announce whatever they should - just with zucks voice and sarcasticly and extra text. But I haven't listened to everything, maybe they did significantly impact someone's life.

I'd prefer to hear an actual example over broad outrage tho

delusional•2h ago

It sounds like they still make the normal/expected sounds. So kudos to the pranksters for keeping them safe and available for the people in need of accessibility.

googlryas•2h ago

The expected sounds are mark Zuckerberg talking about AI for 20 seconds?

No, no kudos to anyone who fucks with safety devices to make some point of theirs.

yellowapple•1h ago

The expected sound is the "WAIT!" voice, which you can clearly still hear. Anything in addition to that is of zero detriment to the accessibility of the system.

xoxxala•1h ago

Deviant Ollam has a video with clips from the crosswalks. He also mentions the accessibility is not impacted. Worth a watch if you haven’t heard the AI impressions.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=woQEJ_fY8Mw

badgersnake•1h ago

Don’t be such a killjoy. It still makes sounds.

magixx•2h ago

I wonder how soon it will be before some company starts renting these out from the city for ad space.

elpocko•2h ago

This HN post is seven days old but displayed and ranked as if it was posted 9 hours ago, with all timestamps falsified. The déjà vu effect is disconcerting and an absolute mind fuck. Please stop doing this, ffs. The person who thought this would be a good idea is a madman.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%20crosswalk%2...

zniturah•2h ago

How is it technically possible?

greyface-•2h ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380

https://news.ycombinator.com/pool (specifically, this post can be found on page 8: https://news.ycombinator.com/pool?next=43673425)

denysvitali•1h ago

Can confirm. Once dang pinged me directly by email saying that my story was re-upped. The story went again to the frontpage and the date was adapted (IIRC), but the comments were kept:

---

Hi denysvitali,

The submission "PostmarketOS-Powered Kubernetes Cluster" that you posted to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352075) looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so.

This is a way of giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page. If you're curious, you can read about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and other links there. And if you don't want these emails, sorry! Let us know and we won't do it again.

Thanks for posting good things to HN!

Daniel (moderator)

ryandrake•1h ago

Wild! I definitely remember commenting on this last week and sure enough my comment shows below as “8 hours ago” (while I was asleep). What kind of sorcery is going on?

yellowapple•1h ago

HN has a "second chance queue" for posts that the powers-that-be believe could've/should've gotten more attention but didn't. Happened to one of my posts once, which was confusing as all hell at first but made sense once I learned about it.

datavirtue•50m ago

Feature in search of a problem

reubenswartz•27m ago

And is Seattle, “Jeff Bezos” says the crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime and exhorts you not to tax the rich.

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