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Airports across North America hacked to play pro-Palestine, anti-Trump messages

Airports across North America experienced an unexpected disruption this week after hackers blasted pro-Palestine and anti-Trump messages.

On Tuesday, the public address system at Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania, as well as three across Canada (Kelowna International Airport, Victoria International Airport, and Windsor International Airport), were co-opted by the hackers, according to CNN.

The messages they played included “f**k Netanyahu and Trump” and “free, free Palestine,” as heard via a recording made at Harrisburg International
At Kelowna International, flight screens displayed the proclamation that “Israel lost the war, Hamas won the war honorably. You are a pig, Donald Trump.”

How were the airports hacked?
Victoria Airport Authority told CTV News that the hack involved someone getting into their cloud-based public address system through a software provider.

“As a result, a file containing unauthorized audio content was uploaded externally and played for a few minutes throughout the terminal,” they said. “Our operations team responded immediately and successfully stopped the broadcast.”

A similar statement was shared by Harrisburg International spokesman Scott Miller, who told WGAL that their PA system was taken offline after an unauthorized person gained access.

“It was not a threat, that’s the important thing,” he added, noting that there’s still an active police investigation into the incident.

Online reactions to the airport hacks
Hacking an airport PA system could cause a lot more disruption than was ultimately on display here, but as Miller noted, this pretty clearly wasn’t about creating panic or making any sort of threat. While the pro-Trump, pro-Israel crowd is pretty up in arms about it, others are finding it at least a little bit amusing.

“ppl hack everything BUT Sallie Mae and clear everyone’s f*cking loans,” @danibabeey commented on TikTok.

“i loved the self promo “hacked by ___” LMAO,” said @gojos_armpit, while @babdoll267 added, “Imagine shutting down the government and realizing you forgot to pay cybersecurity.”

“What radio station is this I’d like to request they play this song again,” another person joked.

This was a stark difference from happenings over on X, where a lot of blue check accounts were focused on insinuating that hacking into a PA system means the entire airport is completely insecure at every level and just being generally racist.

Although one person did suggest that maybe that was the point, calling it a “false hack to stir up islamophobia.”

“No group is going to hack an airport PA to basically do nothing but say ‘We, ‘cyber Islam’ Hacked your airport PA,’” they wrote.

Guess we’ll just wait to see if FBI director Kash Patel finds a laptop used for hacking the system with “PRO-HAMAS” engraved across the top!

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