Russian Billboard Includes A “happy Ending”

It seems someone hacked into one of LED billboards and added porn video clips to the rotation of advertisements. We caught a glimpse before YouTube yanked it. We’ve pixelated the shot above which already had some blackbox censorship from the OP but we assure you, it was hardcore porn.

The 9-by-6 meter billboard is in downtown Moscow. The AP is reporting that this caused something of a traffic jam and shocked passersby. We’ve seen porn before, but have to admit that even knowing what to expect in the video it was a bit shocking for us to see cars driving by a giant sex scene. This is certainly much more of a distraction than leaving clever messages on the side of the road.

Does anyone know what technology is used to update these billboards? We’re curious as to whether physical access to the unit is necessary for this kind of attack. Leave your insights in the comments.

[Thanks Sean]

67 thoughts on “Russian Billboard Includes A “happy Ending”

  1. hmm, I imagine it’s network connected. Also, it’s pretty common knowledge that normal text traffic boards (modifiable on site only) have ridiculously poor security. With more network-connected/semi-smart devices/displays, hopefully things will get more secure.

  2. I’ve seen one of these type of screens simply connected to a Windows PC running a custom application. I guess sometimes a bright spark will decide to connect it to a wireless access point so it can be updated easily without physical access to the PC. Who knows, it’d be interesting to find out though!

  3. Chris is right about the Windows PC part. When they installed two new ones near the Jobing.com arena in Glendale AZ, for the longest time one billboard was displaying the Bliss wallpaper, and the other had the purple mountains XP wallpaper as well.

    I’m sure they are network connected, though. For how expensive and more advanced they are over your run-of-the-mill billboard, it sure would be nice to be able to remotely update the sign. I bet in my case, the arena does the updating, since most of the time it shows upcoming performances and sporting event dates.

  4. These type are usually through data centers off-site or on small servers on-site. I’d imaging this one was on-site and accessed physically by a bad employee or some cracker. Nobody randomly gets into a network and does stuff like this..

    Russia is the reverse engineering epicenter, also surprised this wasn’t kiddy porn it being Russia.

  5. @Phaux:
    I live in Phoenix, and I do believe I saw a very similar thing, except the billboard was cycling through the Sample Pictures that were default in XP. I remember sharing a giggle with the IT director at my school because we both knew it was probably just a screensaver that showed anything in My Pictures!

  6. I was at a construction site last summer that was right next to one of these LCD billboards. Which led me to make an offhand comment about hacking it for XBox360 or maybe for porn. The next day there was a camera on a boom sticking out from it facing the billboard.

  7. I’ve actually taken a computer out of one of these signs before. They really arent that secured especially if the sign is connected to an access point. when i left the company i worked for i decided to change the sign to let them know how i felt about them. changing one of these signs is about as easy as breaking into someone’s wifi and loading up some new images to the right IP address on their network.

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  9. I will pay anyone $3 usd who hacks a 40 by 80 pixel arrowboard to display pixelpr0n

    all the signs I’ve personally seen are updated from a serial or network connected pc, usually running windows 3.1 because of loving engineers that don’t update their software

  10. These boards run on a XP box correct, i work with them very often, files get loaded to the billboards driving pc via network, being LAN, WiFi, 3G or whatever the enviroment requires. then the PC runs software that displays the content through a schedule table that is also sent to the driving pc remotely.

  11. Hey some great news, after reading this inspiring article, I checked out some outdoor tv companies’ web sites. I’m living in Turkey, and S T R Ö E R is the biggest outdoor marketing company in Turkey. andddd they have a special FTP Login Panel for their customers built in their Turkish Web Site… Anyone thinking the same ?

  12. Apparently there are a lot of people on here who push bibles like drugs…

    Wahhhh this doesn’t comply with the morals I claim to always follow..boohoo

    This isn’t an all christian website, you don’t like it feel free to fuck off

  13. @Jesus: Whether someone here claims to have morals or not is not really the issue. People come to this site from school, work, etc, and would prefer not to be kicked out of those institutions because someone posted a video with porn. Simple as that, and I think most everyone here is content to keep the site clean enough to view in public.

  14. Here in Portugal, some are connected with old 33kbps modems (gsm too), and you can even find their number in the public phonebook!!!!
    However… most of them use JCDecaux software, which no one until now could get the hands on :|
    Also, physical attack would raise many red flags.

  15. ))) Guys, I’m from Russia and I could tell you that hacking of billboards in Russia is very simple))
    All you need are big ladder, crowbar, keyboard/mouse and you must have the nerve. There is just pc inside billboard. The pc has win xp and has no connection like wifi. And sometimes that pc without password))))))

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