Apparently, many people don't surf TnT with the view subQ comments enabled so I'll re-mention that Adobe's whining about the correct uses of the term photoshop (no one ever adheres to) is highly entertaining. But that regardless of that point, Wells's War of the Worlds and the Max Headroom Chicago TV hack of 1987 seem like more applicable context for what happened here than fark. It's very interesting to me that this should happen now, 30 years after the Max Headroom incident(s). There's other examples of signal hacking pre-Headroom but none in America since and I believe only one or two others through the world, both in the early 2000's, if I'm correct.

My pet theory (why I think it's interesting) is that these things wouldn't have happened during the early years of the internet because they typically stem from what is perceived to be an oppressive media regime. People who would have done this during the early years of internet embraced the new found freedom and face time that the internet afforded them and went there instead. 20 years on, we've experienced another 6 years of media consolidation and a wearing off of the internet's edgy factor. These people want to use shock to make their point and they can no longer achieve that online.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I don't really have any forgiveness for these jerks. I sympathize somewhat with their stated goal of pointing out the flaws in security and the occasional absurdity of our everyday lives, but this prank went just a step too far. It would have been just as effective (and far funnier) to insert a video of a naked dude taking a jog, or simply superimpose "You've been pwned" on the screen, but anyone with even a tiny bit of common sense would realize that spoofing thermonuclear war might not be the best idea. This crime needs an imaginative punishment, though - jackasses like this want jail time, so they can feel like martyrs. Perhaps the members of Ztohoven could be required to do public service work helping war survivors; maybe it would change their mind to see first hand the trauma they superimposed on the TV screen.

Essentially they said they weren't terrorists and they weren't trying to manipulate the public.  They had a higher purpose - they wished to show how easily the news media can be manipulated.

Which is like walking into a bank, holding a gun on the teller, and saying "this is a stickup" in order to show how easily the bank can be robbed.