During a BBC documentary on Wednesday night, system passwords at one of London’s busiest railway stations had been disclosed and were exposed to viewers.

The credentials were attached to the top of a controller’s monitor used at the rail station, the passwords were revealed at about 43 minutes into the programme.

The passwords were stuck to a monitor and were visible during a scene where the two business experts went into the control room at the rail station Waterloo in London. The screenshot seems to be of the workstation on a signaller’s control desk‬ which appears to be running software that controls signals and trains over‪ the final approach to Waterloo station‬.



They were taken by the dynamic duo’s travels to the Wessex Integrated Control Centre, located above the platform entrances at London Waterloo railway station, manned 24 hours a day by teams of controllers from both South West Trains and Network Rail.

However by knowing a password does not indicate that it can necessarily be exploited by anyone remotely. There is a possibility that the password is for the purpose of logging into the physical desktop computer. Nonetheless, you have reduced the point of a password if you have stuck it on the very device which needs the password.

Last week BBC News ran a story discussing fears that computer systems controlling the signal system in the UK could be vulnerable to hacking attacks.

However, it has not happened for the first time that an organization has made a blunder of letting a TV company into its offices, only to discover passwords have been exposed in the background.

French TV station TV5MONDE also made a mistake at the time they were discussing how its systems were recently hacked while revealing yet more passwords at the same time.