It’s no surprise the French station TV5Mundo was hacked. Its employees show just how careless they are with their passwords, even accidentally broadcasting them (more than once) on live TV.
You might have heard that the French TV station TV5Monde was recently hacked and 11 of its stations’ signals were interrupted. While the investigation was taking place, in an unfortunate scenario, one of its own staffers might have inadvertently help explain just how hackers might have gained access to the company’s networks.
In a recent interview about the hacking incident for a French TV program 13 Heures, a TV5Monde’s reporter David Delos proved just how easy it is for anyone to gain access to passwords for the station’s social media accounts (in this case). He was being interviewed in front of a desk that is literally covered in notes, many of which actually are passwords. It is difficult to read the password in the archived footage video. Viewers report that in in the original broadcast of the segment, Twitter and Instagram accounts were visible.
One viewer was, however, able to decipher the stations YouTube password from the archived video footage and let the public know a few hours ago in a tweet. The password was “lemotdepassedeyoutube.” Translated to English, the password would be “the password of YouTube.” The same person, whose Twitter handle is pent0thal, discovered yet another password in a publicly broadcasted segment of the news, which can be seen below.
There is an apparent trend taking place in TV5Monde (and surely other places). Passwords are poorly protected and often outright displayed for everyone to see – what’s more, they’re even broadcasted for everyone to see. In addition to that, there are reports claiming that the main password that was used to hack the station was indeed “azerty12345,” a French equivalent to “qwerty12345.”
I have to agree with another of pent0thal’s tweets: “Passwords on the wall… That’s why we can’t have nice things.” Employees of TV5Monde need some serious rethinking of their password policy. Maybe reading our tips on creating strong passwords would be a good idea as well.
