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TV hackers announce dead are rising

The emergency broadcast system of a television station in Montana is hacked to broadcast the announcement that the undead are coming.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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The broadcast interrupted the "Steve Wilkos Show" with a 'dead are rising from their grave and attacking the living' message. Screenshot by Ty Pendlebury/CNET

The dead are so hot right now. Teen romance "Warm Bodies" was No. 1 in the box office a week ago, and "The Walking Dead" just broke a basic cable record for the most watched show at 12.3 million viewers.

Amid this undead fervor, the fertile, tasty brains of Montana's residents have fallen foul of a hoax alerting them that the dead have risen.

The emergency broadcast system was "hacked" and viewers of the "Steve Wilkos Show" got more than just teen cheaters when alerted that "dead bodies are rising from their graves."

KRTV quickly noticed the broadcast and pulled it down, issuing this apology today:

"Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that 'dead bodies are rising from their graves' in several Montana counties. This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency. Our engineers are investigating to determine what happened and if it affected other media outlets."

If you watch the video below you'll hear what sounds like Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises" calmly telling people not to approach the "dead bodies."

(Via Gawker)