Authorities in Brisbane are looking for the cyberhackers behind the breach and infiltration of a Milton Road digital billboard that ran minutes of lewd and inappropriate content on a Sunday morning.
Chris Tyquin, a Goa executive which operates the billboard and 70 other digital LED screens across South East Queensland, confirmed that they were able to capture the images of the cyberhackers and provided these to the Queensland Police Service (QPS). They also shut down the LED screen on Milton Road some three minutes after their IT team discovered the breach.
The QPS, which confirmed that the display screen was “broken into,” is running possible matches with CCTV recordings. The agency is also encouraging the public to come forward if they have any leads into this serious incident.
Mr Tyquin said their company was not aware of any threats and could not draw out the motives of the cyberhackers. Only one of Goa’s digital billboards was breached but the company’s security system remained intact.
The executive said they immediately ran a security check across their network after the hacking and implemented further security measures on their physical screens and monitoring equipment that night.
The managing director, however, expressed regrets for the three-minute pornographic display on their system as it was likely very distressing to the public, especially the children. The location of the digital billboard on Milton Road is near Milton State School, Milton Park and Frew Park, where countless families spend their leisure and recreational mornings.
“It’s hilarious for a moment until you realise there’s kids around. Like I’m all out for a practical joke but not like this,” a Redditor said.
“Truly we need large industry-wide reform in this area,” another commenter said.
“To be clear I’m an IT Security guy, not a politics guy so I have almost no clue how the reform would be best implemented.
“But it’s genuinely depressing how bad data security is, even at the companies that try to do it right. My experience isn’t super wide so I could have just ended up working at companies that do it wrong, but it’s genuinely concerning how little management cares about data security (even internal policy changes that don’t have a direct cost associated with them) right up until they start getting sued. (This was at a law firm, but I’ve seen similar in other industries).
“It’s honestly kinda depressing. I’d be willing to bet a Bunnings snag that this wasn’t some sophisticated hack. More likely the person that normally controls the sign got Phished and doesn’t use multi-factor authentication.”
Goa prides itself is a family-owned business for more than 50 years. Mr Tyquin described the breach as “irresponsible, deliberate and malicious,” and he’s hoping that QPS will be able to catch the perpetrators.