This billboard hack will make you woozy

It's one thing to hack into a corporate computer system. It's another thing entirely to do so at 660 feet up in the air after having broken into the building. Sure, it might be all in a day's work for Ethan Hunt in "Mission Impossible," but for regular folks, it's an extreme undertaking most of us would rather avoid.

Luckily for us, the guys at On The Roofs seem to love danger -- and filming it. They're a couple of Russian daredevils who excel at the art of "rooftopping," which is basically taking footage from dizzying heights atop buildings and structures where you're not supposed to be. In February, they climbed The Shanghai Tower in China, the world's second-tallest building. Now they took their crazy selves to the top of Hong Kong's China Online Centre skyscraper to do something that gave me vertigo just from watching the video.

First, according a Mashable story, On The Roof's Vitaliy Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov, along with a few buddies -- including Hong Kong native and director Lau Fat Hing Hercules - took the elevator up the building and then using an emergency exit to access a staircase to the roof. Then they reportedly casually walked around the edges of the top of the building taking photos of each other and filming themselves with a drone (which, according to a shot on Hercules' Facebook page, might have been a Phantom 2, which was just used by the manufacturers to film a volcano in Finland). Badass enough, right?

But then they took things a step further by reportedly accessing the control box for the video billboard atop the building, hacking into it and changing the message to read: "What's Up Hong Kong." (In their excitement, I think they forgot the question mark.) They also had the giant video monitor show footage of their Shangahi climb as well as display their brand: On The Roofs.

As the Mashable story notes, things look a little too perfect in the video so its veracity can certainly be called into question (for instance, who was running the drone the whole time?). Combine that with the fact that On The Roofs is sponsored by such big brands as The North Face, Vans and Suunto and you have to wonder if some "arrangements" were made. Mashable says they asked Raskalov and Makhorov if that was the case and they got a definitive "no" back.

Either way, there's no doubt that the high-flying crew were up on top of that building which, as a heights-hater myself, is impressive enough. Check out this video and I think you'll agree.

(Via Mashable.)