If it has not been changed, it has been posted on the internet.” “This is fairly common,” said John Mueller, the vice president for sales at ADDCO, the Minnesota-based manufacturer of the Arlington road sign that was commandeered for the Fortnite reference. And as the signs are often owned and operated by private contractors doing the road work, there’s often little government transportation officials can do to prevent the hacking.
The message - a reference to a crass, anatomical joke popular among fans of the battle-royale game Fortnite - was just the latest example of a road sign being reprogrammed by somebody exploiting the device through a factory-default password that’s been widely distributed around the internet. Instead of being alerted to approaching maintenance work on a busy street, drivers in Arlington, Virginia, last week were greeted by an electronic road sign bearing an unusual, five-letter message: “Ligma.”
