Years ago, I had a dream where I sneaked a wireless mic into a Cher arena show, used a scanner to locate one of her backup singers wireless mic frequencies and then accompanied her on a duet of “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves“. At the end of the song, she asked that I be picked up with a spotlight and then she blew me a kiss.
Every trade magazine I pick up these days has an article about yet another Ipad, smart phone or tablet computer app that is designed to wirelessly interface with a piece of sound or lighting equipment so that it can operated through an internet interface. These are exciting developments and certainly give production pros a great new set of tools for managing their shows.
The article I am expecting to see next month, or the month after, is about how some 20,000 seat arena concert or major corporate media event has been hijacked by someone who has been able to hack one of these sound, lighting or video controllers and bring the show to its knees. It seems inevitable to me.
All sorts of recent revelations regarding how much energy black hat hackers apply to cracking financial networks and major e-commerce sites show us time and again how vulnerable these interconnected resources are. If major credit card and online sales web sites that spend millions on security can be hacked and taken over, even briefly, by outside parties, it seems highly likely that wireless internet-based show controllers, subject to little or no security, must be quite vulnerable.
No kisses are going to be blown when this prediction comes true!
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