LA Metro digital signs taken over by hackers

LA Metro signage may have been hijacked by online activists earlier this week as the boards typically meant to display wait times and other messages instead displayed a threatening message.

Photos shared with KTLA on Monday showed one of the digital reader boards at a bus stop at 6th Street and Vermont Avenue displaying a message that read “EMERGENCY WARNING. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. RISK OF SUICIDE BOMB.”

The message was signed with a social media handle that some outlets have reported is a Turkish hacker group that may also be responsible for hijacking public announcement systems at multiple airports in North America.

LA Metro officials said the digital signage boards at several bus stops were commandeered. The violent messages could be traced by to a third-party content management system called Papercast that it said was “compromised.”

“The unauthorized messaging has since been removed. LA Metro is working with Papercast, its third-party vendor, to identify the source of the intrusion and address it.”