Russian busted for posting porn video to hacked billboards

The experts say that cybercrime is all about money these days, but an unemployed 40-year-old Russian, arrested just this week, proved last month that this isn’t true.

He hacked into a giant digital billboard last month and caused it to run a hard-core pornographic clip for about 20 minutes one chilly Moscow evening.

“It took the authorities until 11:23 pm to get the two-minute clip down, but the section of the Garden Ring Road near the Oktyabrskaya metro station was already at a stand-still and everyone was roundly embarrassed,” according to this account of the incident (includes a blurry photo of the 9 by 6 meter billboard)

According to a Ria Novosti report the unidentified hacker didn’t realize he was playing the two-minute porn clip on a billboard:

The unnamed man has already admitted breaking into the advertising company’s system, but says that he thought the clip he decided to air in place of ads for deodorant, fast food and other consumer delights would only be shown in a supermarket, the paper wrote.

“When I put the clip on the screen’s server, I didn’t think it would be seen by a large audience, as I supposed the screen was located in a Moscow store,” the suspect was quoted as saying.

“I just wanted to give people a laugh,” he added.

He reportedly accessed the billboard through a Chechnyan IP address, hoping that this would keep authorities off his tracks.

He could face two years in prison for the stunt.

Russia gets a lot of flack for allowing cyber-criminals to go unpunished, but this shows that law enforcement there really can do busts if it wants to.