Screens Above NZ Shoe Store Hacked To Run Porn Video

September 30, 2019 by Dave Haynes

If the need to lock down a public-facing digital signage display wasn’t obvious already, here’s an example from New Zealand of what happens when operators either don’t, or don’t do it well enough.

The New Zealand Herald is reporting that someone – presumably hackers – penetrated the media play-out device that drives content on the 2X2 LCD screen video wall above an Asics store in central Auckland. A video suggests just one of the two video walls was affected.

The screen ran porn material for roughly two hours on Sunday morning, before store staff showed up, saw what was on the screen, and did what was necessary to turn the thing off. The pic above shows what’s normally up on the screens at what appears to be a flagship store.

I doubt serious hackers could be bothered with juvenile monkey business like this, which might mean (totally guessing) this is one of those cases where the password was 123456 or PASSWORD.

  1. As said – with good passwords it is not likely that someone will be able to act poorly through the software. However anyone can hi-jack most TV’s simply by using the remote control.

    Our biggest issue right now is with our client’s employees switching the digital signage over to the content of their choice when the owner or manager is not around. All but a few TV’s are smart and come with pre-loaded streaming and internet browsers – with the TV remote a person can easily play anything they want.

    There are also a number of “TV remote” phone apps. My phone is a fully working remote for nearly all smart TV’s that are on the market right now. I have been in many businesses with digital signage on a cheap Walmart smart TV and knew that if I wanted to be bad or even very bad absolutely nothing was stopping me.

    I am surprised that this sort of “porn on the screen” thing does not happen more often.

    – Paul Wheeler
    Local Business Patrtiots / Email to my TV

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