Hacked french TV channel exposed passwords in TV interview (video, screenshots, links)

This week a major french TV networks was hacked (Article on CNN #1, #2), resulting in 11 channels being completely black for hours, several disfaced social media accounts and the usual stuff that didn’t make it to public, like compromised mail accounts etc. All defaced sites have shown massive pro-ISIS propaganda stuff, so it’s possible it’s an ISIS “attack”.

It was the biggest media takedown in the history of european television (unconfirmed information).

What makes this interesting: There’s a possibility that this was started with the TV channel itself showing internal (and very weak) passwords in a live TV interview, done directly in front of the “printed out passwords wall”. Well…, yes. When using the HD version of the raw TV stream, plus a little bit of Photoshop filtering, and knowledge of common french passwords: Voila, you don’t even have to guess. The screenshot below is just a multiple-times-compressed stream image.

You can watch an archived version (in low quality) here directly on the TV station’s archive. Jump to 3:45. Note that this show is not the original show (like said by several very big tech blogs), it’s a coverage of the events happened.

Personally I think it takes much more to take down a professional TV station than a few login credentials for social media. There’s absolutly no reason why server keys and access to the highest level of program control should be connected to social media accounts in any way, plus the fact that deep control of the station’s content streaming shouldn’t be accessable from outside the office. There’s so much more that’s wrong here, but .. well, we don’t know.