NCDOT says the sign was hacked, but the roadside display wasn’t even locked.

    • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      TBH, leaving it unlocked is a great way to hedge your bets if you’re an NCDOT employee who wants to put N***** on a sign

    • Veraxus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s just shorthand for “unauthorized access to a digital system”. There could be no password at all and it would still count as “hacking”. The difficulty of gaining access isn’t really relevant, legally speaking.

    • 0110010001100010@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah and if I recall correctly the default password on these things is like 1234 and rarely changed. So unlocked with a stupid password isn’t even close to hacked.

      • ArbitraryValue
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        1 year ago

        unlocked with a stupid password isn’t even close to hacked

        It’s hacking in the same sense that stealing stuff from a house after the owner left the door unlocked is burglary, with that sense being the legal sense.

      • uphillbothways@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        From a 2009 Jalopnik article:

        Should it will ask you for a password. Try “DOTS”, the default password.

        In all likelihood, the crew will not have changed it. However if they did, never fear. Hold “Control” and “Shift” and while holding, enter “DIPY”. This will reset the sign and reset the password to “DOTS” in the process. You’re in!

        You can also find the manuals for these electronic road signs easily online.

    • ZeroCool@feddit.ch
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      1 year ago

      Most instances of hacking rely on social engineering because the human element is typically the weakest point of any system. Real life isn’t a movie, hacking is a hell of a lot more mundane and the ways hackers achieve their goals are often as silly as this case where someone literally left a door open. So yes, this sign was “hacked.” And yes, it was the result of a very stupid mistake on the part of an employee of the NCDOT. The term isn’t dependent on the difficulty or complexity of the task. It just refers to finding a vulnerability and exploiting it.

      • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No shit. Fucking Stuxnet was achieved by dropping a thumbdrive outside the building and letting a naive, curious iranian scientist plug it into their airlocked computer network.

        Then it played looped video while it destroyed everything. Just like a shitty Mission Impossible movie. In real life. Dead serious.