Some 300 Stores In QSR Chain See Menu Displays Hacked By Pro-Palestine Activists
April 10, 2025 by Dave Haynes
Hacks of digital screens happens here and there, but a recent one involving a Canadian QSR chain was particularly bad because it appears to have been network-wide, affecting the menu board displays at the order counter AND outdoor screens in the drive-thru.
So not just one or two stores because someone used PASSWORD as the password. All 300 or so of the Mary Brown’s fried chicken stores across the country. The Newfoundland-based chain has acknowledged the issue and attributed it to “a security breach within the system of our third-party digital signage provider.”
I am pretty sure I know who that is, but it could be the CMS OR it could be the solutions provider that re-sells and perhaps manages that CMS software for the client. Dunno. So I’m not going to point fingers.
Obviously, that’s a big-big boo-boo that likely resulted in a frank discussion and salty language with the service provider. The screens had to be turned off because the menu displays were showing Stand for Humanity. Stand for Palestine instead of peddling “mouth-watering Signature Chicken.”
A local newspaper grabbed this from an unattributed Facebook page
The hackers were sufficiently comfy that they showed their name and Telegram handle on the screen.
Apart from the embarrassment, the more fundamental issue is disruption and lost business when screens had to go black while a fix was made.
Were the Digital Media Players on Wi-Fi?
No idea.
As a signage partner, your job doesn’t end with the install. When 300+ screens go black or worse, get hijacked, it’s not just a security issue, it’s a visibility disaster and a business liability. As someone who manages signage infrastructure, I don’t care who made the mistake. I care about fixing it.
What matters is owning the problem, showing up, and making sure it doesn’t happen again. We need to stop treating system responsibility like a hot potato passed between vendors, CMS providers, and integrators. That’s not a partnership. That’s a ticking time bomb.