Hacked Texas Road Sign Blinks Message About Trump

Electronic construction signs in the Dallas area appear to have been hacked, displaying messages calling Donald Trump a reptile and imploring early morning commuters to take a day off work, the AP reports. The portable signs along Interstate 30 and elsewhere flashed various messages early Tuesday, including "Donald Trump is a ... shape shifting lizard!" Another message read, "Bernie for president," while still another sign said: "Work is canceled. Go back home." The signs appear to be ones used by the Texas Department of Transportation, and it wasn't the first time they were hacked: CBS-DFW notes that sometime over Memorial Day weekend, one of the signs had been changed to read "Party Hardy Yall."

That message was removed by Monday, and the sign was ostensibly secured by the contractor against further vandalism, a TxDot rep says—but the new hacked messages popped up after someone again broke into the system late Monday or early Tuesday. And it's not a snap-your-fingers task to fix, per NBC-DFW: The signs can't be operated remotely, so any modifications have to be done manually via the control panels. TxDOT tells Dallas-Fort Worth broadcaster KRLD that there's no humor in what the hackers did. The agency says the messages bumped warnings to motorists about nearby construction zones. (More Donald Trump 2016 stories.)