As the cost of display technology comes down and the size of displays increases the popularity of public video billboards has also increased. Such displays allow for TV-like adverts to be displayed in shopping malls, at the side of the road, and generally anywhere there is a lot of faces to look at them.
In Moscow video billboards are positioned alongside some of the busiest highways showing advertising
and information 24 hours a day. But on Thursday night the video being played on two of these displays wasn’t an advert and it brought traffic to a halt; blocking the roads while drivers stopped to watch in amazement.Some enterprising hacker/s had managed to take control of these two billboards located on Moscow’s Garden Ring Road. The video they chose to upload or stream was X-rated pornography.
The owner of the hacked displays is an advertising company
called Panno.ru. It was notified of the “problem” three minutes after the porn had started playing, but it took them a further fifteen minutes to co-ordinate and switch off the displays.Pennu.ru do not know who or how the display was accessed and aren’t ruling out a competing advertising company being involved in this eye-opening event.