US TV station hacked with hoax zombie broadcast

A TELEVISION STATION in the US has fallen prey to hackers who broadcast a hoax zombie alert to viewers in Montana.

People watching KRTV in the region heard a man's voice during the airing of talk show broadcast about "teen cheaters", claiming that "bodies of the dead are rising from their graves".

The alert also claimed that zombies were attacking the living.

"This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency," KRTV said in a statement on Monday.

"Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that there was an emergency in several Montana counties,"

There are reports that the hoax caused concerns, with at least four calls to police from viewers asking if it was true.

KRTV said its engineers are investigating to determine what happened and whether it affected any other media outlets.

The zombie hoax is yet another hacking attack to hit the media. The New York Times and Twitter were both victimised by hackers this past month.

The New York Times reported in January that it has been the victim of a prolonged cyber attack by Chinese hackers, with the company saying it has been under attack for four months,

More recently, Twitter was infiltrated by hackers who gained access to the sensitive data of around a quarter of a million of its users, with the cyber criminals accessing usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted versions of passwords. µ