Hacked French broadcaster's passwords revealed in TV broadcast

TV5Monde was hit by a crippling cyberattack on Wednesday when Islamist hackers managed to disrupt broadcasting across its channels and hijacked the station's website and social media accounts.

In the wake of the attack the offices of TV5Monde were visited by reporters of another French TV station, which broadcast an interview with one of TV5Monde's reporters, David Delos. Behind Delos in the shot however, several printouts stuck to a wall appear to reveal the usernames and passwords for social media accounts including Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

While the quality of the archived broadcast is too grainy to determine what the passwords are, they could have been better readable on a high-definition television. One eagle-eyed Twitter user deciphered TV5Monde's YouTube channel password as "lemotdepassedeyoutube", meaning "thepasswordforyoutube" in French.

It is still unknown how the hackers infiltrated the broadcaster's systems, but the footage shows the cyberattack could have been a lot less sophisticated many have assumed: Any visitor to the offices could have seen the passwords.

It is certainly not the first time passwords were accidentally shown in TV. In 2014, for instance, CBS aired a report on Super Bowl security, including a shot taken at the Super Bowl security headquarters showing login information for a Wi-Fi network.

Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, online payment issues as well as EU technology policy and regulation for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com