Tech

Hackers claim responsibility for Super Bowl power outage

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
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Update, 2/6/2013 at 1:12 a.m.:

Rustle League is not a hacktivist group, nor are they affiliated with Anonymous. They are a band of Internet trolls that claim to hunt Anons and push the bounds of free speech on the Internet. They also denied having actually hacked the Super Bowl, instead stating that their screen shots were meant to be a joke.
Read the original story below:

Hackers and hacktivists associated with Anonymous have attempted to claim responsibility for Sunday night’s power outage at the Super Bowl that left fans and teams in the dark for over 30 minutes.

Screenshots posted to Twitter by the account @RustleLeague show a program allegedly used to control the lights at the events.

Rustle League is a band of hacktivist Internet trolls loosely affiliated with the Anonymous collective.

“Just to confirm, here is a screenshot of the program we hijacked that is used to control the lights,” said the account.

Another caption for a separate picture tweeted by the account read, “Last screenshot was set up for color schemes, here are the actual light controls.”

The remainder of Rustle League’s account, however, is filled with numerous falsehoods, putting the credibility of the group’s claims in question.

The New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee did not return The Daily Caller’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Entergy and SMG, management company of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, issued a statement late Sunday evening placing blame for the outage on “a piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system.”

“Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue,” said the company.

CBS also issued a statement following the power outage, stating that the network “lost numerous cameras and some audio powered by sources in the Superdome” immediately following the power failure.

“We utilized CBS’s back-up power and at no time did we leave the air,” said the network.

A report by The Daily Dot, however, suggests that the credit taken by Anonymous may have been nothing more than people associated with the group attempting to troll, or provoke, football fans.

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