Anthony Bruni has called Kennedy Township home for more than half a century and he’s never seen anything like the hacked digital message sign mounted on an old firetruck in front of Mama Lena’s Firehouse Grill.
“We don’t know how,” said Bruni, the township’s chief of police, said Thursday. “But it was definitely hacked.
“I can’t remember anything like this happening in our town. It’s a nice, quiet community. That’s not to say that nothing ever happens here. But nothing like this has ever happened.”
In a nutshell, someone hijacked the LED sign just off Fairhaven Road and inserted racial slurs in between the sign’s usual message of “Firehouse Grill … Pizza-Pasta-Burgers Plus Much More … We’re Hiring.”
Owner Robert Carrabbia, who also operates Mama Lena’s II on Broadway Avenue in neighboring Stowe Township, said he heard from the Kennedy Township police department on Sunday that someone had made a complaint about the hijacked message sign. When he arrived at the eatery, which is not yet open for business, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Someone had done something to sabotage it,” he said of the sign.
Carrabbia said there is no telling who might be responsible.
“I can’t point fingers at anyone,” he said. “It could be anyone – an ex-employee, the competition, numerous people.”
Carrabbia described the sign as a “Wi-Fi, LED, cheap Amazon thing” with zero security features. He said he was not aware of the sign’s security vulnerability when he purchased it.
“The sign has been up a year, just flashing back and forth,” he said. “We’ve never paid attention – we don’t even look at it. We just stuck it out on the street edge.”
He said the message “wasn’t anything dramatic — just ‘Coming soon, now hiring, pizza, burgers.’ Just a scrolling sign to let people know we’re coming.”
Carrabbia said it’s not difficult to find your way into the inner workings of the digital sign. He said if someone is near it and can access Wi-Fi and a required app, the sign will pop up.
“As long as you download the app, anyone can get in,” he said. “So it’s hard to pinpoint and say anybody (in particular) did it. I can’t accuse anyone because we don’t know. But someone sabotaged it – maybe someone who’s scared for us to come in and take their business.”
Carrabbia took to social media Wednesday to address the situation, saying that the sign was hacked and accessed without his knowledge or permission, resulting in an “inappropriate” message being displayed.
“The message was NOT created, approved, or posted by us,” the post reads. “It does NOT reflect who we are, our values or our business.
“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we shut the sign down immediately, secured the system and took steps to prevent this from happening again.”
The post said that the business was cooperating fully with the township Police Department “and allowing the proper authorities to handle it.”
Bruni said Carrabbia has been “completely and extremely cooperative.”
“I feel bad for the business owner,” said Bruni, who has been the Kennedy police chief for 22 years. “Whatever we’ve asked of him, he’s given us.”
Bruni said the department is working on some leads but had nothing to show for it by midday Thursday.
“It will be difficult to figure out who did this,” Bruni said. “But we’re following up on some of the information he gave us.”
The incident attracted plenty of attention on social media, with many of those messages being supportive. That doesn’t surprise Carrabbia.
“People in this area know me – they know we take care of the community,” said Carrabbia, who has operated a Mama Lena’s restaurant in one location or another since 1994. “Any backlash we’re getting is coming from outside the area. The people who know us know we’re about family and taking care of the community. We don’t discriminate against anyone. We welcome everybody.”
Carrabbia said he hopes the Firehouse Grill, which is located on the site of the former Firemen’s Club, will open “within a few weeks” but added that the sign situation hasn’t helped the cause.
“We were supposed to be in there this week getting our recipes down pat but now we had this setback,” Carrabbia said. “We also had some family health problems, but we were able to get those squared away. Now we’re back on track and trying to get open.”
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