On February 1, 2009, the Arizona Cardinals were closer to winning than ever before, and Larry Fitzgerald sacked the Pittsburgh Steelers to give the Cardinals a three-point lead in Super Bowl XLIII. Cardinals fans watched on television and celebrated as Fitzgerald was cheered on by teammates. Then, amidst the excitement and euphoria, the game froze and then went dark for some viewers in Tucson, Arizona. What replaced the game for 30 seconds was a short video clip that had explicit pornographic content. Fans were outraged and complained, and the issue escalated. This raised concerns among Comcast employees about how the glitch was caused and whether it was an act of sabotage. For several months it was a mystery and even special agents from the FBI were unable to provide any answers.
After two years, the investigation led to the arrest of an employee and an answer was given to the question of what happened that day and why the SuperBowl match went so wrong.
What exactly happened?
The morning after the game, Comcast, the telecommunications company that was broadcasting the game, launched an investigation with the FBI. Employees exchanged messages and evidence, but a careful internal investigation did not identify any suspects. This was because Comcast's Super Bowl broadcast had come from a neighboring cable company called Cox. It should be noted that Cox and Comcast had a friendly relationship. Cox, for its part, stated that it did not carry or broadcast adult content channels, so it was impossible for its employees to be at fault.
However, according to FBI investigations, one employee was discovered who was suspicious. His name is Frank Gonzalez. Frank was 36 years old at the time and had many skills, being a trusted member of the technical team at the Cox control center in Tucson. He was also the person who was called by Comcast when the decision was made to implement more modern transmission equipment in 2008. Frank then passed the order to the center to help Comcast's engineers configure a new server and a multimedia router.
According to the FBI, at least two things happened when he did this. Frank either received a code required to access Comcast's new equipment to help with the reconfiguration, or he received a blank piece of paper from a technician that listed connection information that had not been changed by default since the equipment was purchased. So Frank returned to Cox with a Comcast multimedia router and a code. It was these two that disrupted Super Bowl XLIII.
In the meantime, Frank was experimenting with the new equipment and on June 9, 2008, he connected to a Cox server. Using a router, an Ethernet cable, a modified connection to the Cox control center, and the login credentials, he was able to access the Comcast server. Then, in less than 25 minutes, he was disconnected and an unauthorized intrusion occurred.
In addition, according to Comcast employees who were investigated by the FBI, Frank used the new access several times. While Comcast technicians were having problems with the new channel, Frank would secretly go into the system and reconfigure the channel for them. It remains unclear to this day how many times Frank broke into Comcast's network. However, what is certain is that Frank had access and connected a router to the Cox server, which he had remote access to via a VPN. All he had to do was control the content that was being streamed with just a username and password, which he had.
For some time it was difficult to discover the SuperBowl outage, but after research and many interviews with employees, the following username was found in the software authorization “corp\fgonzale”. This username was connected to the administrator when the SuperBowl event occurred on February 1. At that time, Frank could not undo anything and admitted that he was at fault.
Why Frank hack the SuperBowl?
Frank admitted to lying at first but later confessed to the crime and was arrested in 2011. The only question on everyone's mind was why he hacked the system and interrupted the Super Bowl for a few seconds, but even ten years later it remains a mystery. Although colleagues referred to him as a reliable and hardworking person, many claim that his goal was to prank someone he knew, ignoring the consequences. Even ten years later, the peculiar and reprehensible incident has been left to speculation, without an answer.
