Asics Says Sorry After Porn Plays For Hours On Shop TV Screen

Hackers have compromised a giant television screen at an Asics sports store in Auckland, New Zealand.

Unfortunately, the attack reportedly began at 1am on Sunday morning, and it resulted in the television screen on Auckland’s Queen Street, the country’s busiest shopping street, displaying porn for a nine hour period.

Indeed, the porn marathon was only halted at 10am Sunday morning, after staff arrived to work at the store and switched off the television screen.

Sex in the city

According to the New Zealand Herald newspaper, the Asics store manager apologised and said a full investigation is under way.

A spokeswoman at Asics head office also reportedly confirmed the company has contacted police and Netsafe over the incident.

The store manager in Auckland reportedly said the incident happened because of a cybersecurity breach. The store manager said he was “100 percent sure” the explicit videos had not been uploaded by one of his staff.

“This morning an unknown person gained access to the screens above our Central Auckland store and some objectionable content was displayed on the screens,” said the statement published on Asics New Zealand’s Facebook page.

“We would like to apologise to anyone who may have seen this,” the Japanese sporting brand said. “We are working with our software and online security suppliers to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

The porn video was apparently seen by parents with young children, as well as police and other early morning shoppers.

Embarrassment factor

This is not the first time that hackers have used porn to embarrass their victims.

In 2016 hacked Instagram profiles are found to be altered with pornographic imagery promoting adult dating and porn spam.

In 2015 fraudsters used hijacked router DNS settings to intercept Google Analytics tags and replaced them with pornography and adverts.

And in 2014 Claire Perry, a Labour MP that campaigned for porn blocking tools, was left red-faced after hackers defaced her website with references to porn.

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