Hackers Put Pornhub On Family Business’ Billboard In Brisbane

Rub your ears and rinse your eyes: porn just got aired on a digital billboard in Brisbane. Police are still searching for the culprits, with the hackers having got away with the crime… for now.

Drivers on one of Brisbane’s busiest roads got a rude shock on Sunday. Porn was aired on a billboard on Milton Road. The billboard was owned by Goa, a family-owned business that looks after more than 70 digital billboards around southeast Queensland.

Goa said the billboard started to blast porn on Sunday. They say they have given police images of people who “may be able to help with their inquiries.”

The porn was reportedly displayed for some time between a few seconds and up to three and a half minutes. Within minutes of the cyber attack, the company’s IT team shut off the billboard and began looking into the breach.

“No other screen in our network was affected in any way; all continue to operate as scheduled,” the company said. “Apart from this one-off incident, the rest of our internal transmission systems, including security systems, were not breached in any way.”

According to The Brisbane Times, Police said they had got a complaint “after a secure advertising billboard structure on Milton Road was broken into on Sunday morning.”

Also according to The Brisbane Times, Goa managing director Chris Tyquin said the company had not received threats and that the police were still investigating the motive of the attack.

A spokesperson from Goa told Mumbrella: “As a family‐owned business…no manner or format of pornography is acceptable. It is totally inconsistent with our company values and within the community in which we operate.”

“The public transmission or proliferation of any material of a pornographic nature is abhorrent to Goa and all of our people. We regret the offence or distress that this may have caused to members of the public who evidenced this transmission.”

Over on Reddit, where the news first broke, a heady debate broke out about the attack. One user said it showed Australia needed better cyber security (“it’s genuinely depressing how bad data security is, even at the companies that try to do it right”), while another said the implications weren’t so far-reaching.

This calm soul said: “I think you underestimate the simplicity of this attack. Most likely someone got physical access to the computer that displays the video located inside the sign and opened a browser to a porn site.”