Two computer science students took over a billboard in Belgrade, Serbia earlier this month for two reasons. One, they wanted to expose the security weaknesses of the billboard as part of a project, and two, they wanted to play 'Space Invaders' on the big screen. The pair posted up a YouTube video of the exploit, in which they casually stroll up to a busy city street and play 'Space Invaders' on the billboard using their iPhones as controllers. We've embedded the video below, you'll have to forgive them for the music.
Students Ivan Petrović, 21, and Filip Stanisavljević, 20, took about 8 hours to get the hack together, according to Kurir, and ended their display with a playful "Hacked4Fun" and Gandhi's words, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
And win they did. While they were only able to keep the game up for about 20 minutes, the company that owns the billboard, DPC, took notice, but instead of punishing them they gave them both an iPad and a pat on the back.
"This has never happened before, but we appreciate the fact that these guys have, in a charming way, pointed us to this huge problem," Slobodan Petrovic, manager of DPC, says in an interview with Kurir.
In the Youtube description for their video, the two students made clear their playful intentions, that they only hacked the billboard for "research purposes only."
"We wanted to demonstrate how companies sometimes pay very little attention to security - it had nothing to do with this specific company or even billboard companies, but rather any company that uses any form of technology that can be targeted by this kind of "attack". We chose the billboard simply because we believed it is the strongest way to prove our point," they write.