Denver’s crosswalks hacked to broadcast anti-Trump messages

INDUSTRY NEWS 2 min read Denver's crosswalks hacked to broadcast anti-Trump messages Graham CLULEY March 20, 2026 Pedestrians crossing a street in Denver, Colorado, got rather more than they bargained for last weekend, when the audio signals at two crosswalks began broadcasting a political message alongside their usual walking instructions. "The walk signal is on, f*** Trump. The walk signal is on, Trump murders children" That was the rather blunt message being played in a robotic voice to surprised pedestrians as they walked down East Colfax Avenue, Denver, according to numerous posts shared across social media. It's a tale that should sound familiar to regular readers of Hot for Security. For instance, just last year we reported on a very similar wave of crosswalk hacking, n which pedestrians in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Seattle were startled to hear deepfake audio impersonating tech giants Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. When everything online feels risky, trust what’s proven safe. Try Bitdefender Premium Security free today. Try It Free A security researcher had previously demonstrated that it was trivially easy to reconfigure the audio used by crosswalk systems made by Polara, because installers had not bothered to change the default password. Fast forward to 2026, and local media reports suggest that the newly-installed crosswalk units in Denver were similarly accessed due to their use of factory-default credentials. In other words, here we go again. Same vulnerability, different crosswalk. The affected crosswalks in Denver - intended to help people with visual impairments safely cross navigate intersections - had been recently installed at the junctions of East Colfax Avenue with North Pearl Street and North Washington Street, according to Nancy Kuhn, Communications Director at Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. She told The Denver Post that the devices were not yet supposed to be operational, but had recently been turned on while still using their factory settings. Passwords on the affected crosswalks have since been changed, and police say that they are investigating the matter. While it's easy to discount such attacks as mischievous pranks, there is a serious impact to hacks like this. After all, the audio of a crosswalk is something that people who are blind or are visually impaired depend upon for their safety. Tampering with them - whatever the political motivation - introduces a hazard, and cash-strapped city authorities are forced to spend time and money fixing them. None of which, of course, ignores the fact that the underlying vulnerability is entirely preventable. Default passwords have plagued all manner of technology, including crosswalks and other roadside infrastructure in the past. TAGS industry news AUTHOR Graham CLULEY Graham Cluley is an award-winning security blogger, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s. View all posts RIGHT NOW TOP POSTS SCAM HOW TO Scammer phone number lookup. How to check if a phone number is a scam April 19, 2024 FAMILY SAFETY How to Outsmart AI Voice Scammers Pretending to Be Your Family March 03, 2026 SCAM DIGITAL PRIVACY HOW TO How scammers gain access and hack your WhatsApp account and what you can do to protect yourself May 01, 2024 INDUSTRY NEWS 200,000 naked Snapchat images leaked, after third-party hack October 13, 2014 FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE INDUSTRY NEWS French Sailor Reveals Location of Aircraft Carrier via Strava Silviu STAHIE March 20, 2026 3 min read INDUSTRY NEWS Denver's crosswalks hacked to broadcast anti-Trump messages Graham CLULEY March 20, 2026 2 min read INDUSTRY NEWS MOBILE SECURITY ‘Update iOS to Protect Your Data’ – Apple Urges Users to Patch Against Coruna and DarkSword Exploits Filip TRUȚĂ March 20, 2026 3 min read BOOKMARKS You have no bookmarks yet. Tap to read it later.