Following the hacking by a pro-Isis group that took a French television station offline, a live interview with a TV5Monde reporter has unwittingly exposed the usernames and passwords used for a variety of company accounts and services.



The hack saw TV5Monde’s computer network taken offline, disrupting a variety of company services from email accounts to the production machines used to edit video, including the servers used to send television pictures for broadcast.

Reports indicate TV5Monde’s lax approach to security, including its failure to segment its broadcast machines from its administration and user computers, contributed to the hack, making it easier for the attackers to cause damage.

That same failure to take security seriously revealed a collection of the TV station’s usernames and passwords that were scribbled on a mess of sticky notes and index cards stuck to a wall live on TV. The accounts for the station’s YouTube channel, Twitter and Instagram were all visible, along with a collection of others.

‘There could be an element of luck’

Other reports have pointed to weak passwords such as the French equivalent of “qwerty12345” as a possible hole through which the hackers gained entry to the TV station.

“Typically you have difference phases in an attack like this. The first one would be identifying who has the necessary access to the systems to actually do harm. Infecting just some random computer generally isn’t enough. They go to unprecedented levels and a great deal of effort during the planning phase, researching the targets as apposed to actually hacking them,” explained Christophe Birkeland vice president of engineering at security firm Blue Coat Systems.

“But there could be an element of luck, such as that particular person being sloppy with their data on Facebook giving the attackers enough information to take control of their corporate account through brute force,” he said.

Simple passwords are easy to guess through automated means for hackers attempting to gain entry into vulnerable computer systems, such as TV5Monde’s.

“It’s not possible to be 100% bulletproof in today’s cyberthreat landscape,” said Birkeland. “Instead, companies must be prepared for an attack, to detect it and implement systems to limit it’s impact as quickly as possible.”

“What we’re seeing here is real-world impact, the disruption of critical infrastructure, access to information and an important part of a democratic society. The attackers are breaking new ground, and this might not be the last we hear of this. We could see a broader campaign, where TV5 was just one hit,” said Arandjelovic. “We’re seeing TV5 coming back online, but it’s entirely possible that they haven’t purged all traces of the attack from their systems and could still be compromised.”

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