Some hackers over on the Isle of Wight came up with an ingenious way for folks to pass the time at the charge station while filling up their electric car: They took over the chargers to start displaying porn. How kind of them!
Now, this wasn’t a particularly massive hack job. The Isle of Wight is a small English island that boasts a population of about 141,000 people and a mere three different charging points for electric vehicles. It was, then, a pretty simple job for the hackers that opted to use their powers for good by displaying pornographic images as drivers plugged in for a charge.
Sadly, council members in the Isle of Wight were not impressed, Sky News reports, and have been making an effort to ensure that all explicit images have been “covered up.”
Here’s a little more from Sky:
The issue is understood to have first been reported on Sunday to the Isle of Wight County Press newspaper after drivers were unable to get one of the charging points to work.
The paper said it then alerted the council to the problem.
The local authority said: “We are saddened to learn that a third-party web address displayed on our electric vehicle (EV) signage appears to have been hacked.
“The council would like to apologise to anyone who may have found the inappropriate web content and for any inconvenience from charge points out of action.”
Local authorities also noted that the chargers it currently possesses, which are part of the GeniePoint network, have proven to be notoriously unreliable, and those chargers are set to be replaced sometime in the next few months.
The GeniePoint chargers were designed to display the Isle of Wight Council website while people charge their vehicles; it was a pretty simple job to change that site to a porn website. I’m sure they were just trying to help spice up the EV ownership experience.