An unsuspecting estate agent drove past his offices to see a political message displayed in bold black and red lettering, “ממשלה מושחתת” (corrupt government).
The office is located in Prima Kings Hotel on the junction of King George and Ramban St, one of Jerusalem’s busiest junctions.
Noam Kotler, the owner of a real estate agency and management company that focuses on luxury rentals and sales in the heart of Jerusalem, received a picture from an employee on Sunday morning of their office display.
As he made his way over to the offices, he didn’t know what had actually happened. In the initial images Kotler couldn’t tell whether someone had broken into the office, if it was spray paint, a sticker, or a hacked screen.
The screen that was typically used to display their latest projects had been hijacked. Despite the brief sense of relief upon realizing that the office itself hadn’t been broken into, Kotler’s stress increased again as he discovered he couldn’t override the hacker’s code.
He tried to reconnect to the screen through the software they use to update its display but upon opening it was faced with the message that the code had been deleted. He eventually decided the only way forward was to unplug the TV entirely so as to remove the message from display.
Kotler has rented this office space for 3+ years and has had the TV for the same amount of time. Although they can update the display through a wired connection they typically use wireless broadcasting.
He is hoping that on Sunday he will be able to remove the text and return to the normal project promotion using the wired connection but is concerned about the more expensive implications of that not working. If it fails he would have to call someone out to write in more secure coding or even replace the TV as a whole.
How did this happen?
Wireless broadcasting to a TV can generally only be done from a distance of ten meters. The office had no signs of a break-in, so Kotler theorizes that the hacker was close by, in or around the hotel, to have been able to bypass the code and change the screen’s display.
On Tuesday, Kotler spoke to a neighbour who lives opposite the hotel. His neighbour said that he saw the text appear on motzei Shabbat, as the rally calling for the return of the hostages from Gaza came to an end.
Kotler described having been made to feel unsafe by these rallies, telling a story of having gone to drop food to the wife of a reservist friend one motzei Shabbat and getting stuck in the middle of the protest with his young son in the car for three minutes as they slowly crawled forward before they could turn back out of the protesters’ path. He talked about feeling “terrified as the protesters surrounded the car,” chanting and marching.
Aftermath
Kotler no longer feels confident in the safety of public screens;, he feels that his security has been violated by the hijacking of his screen for a protest. He doesn’t believe it was a targeted personal attack but rather that his screen happened to be in a prime visibility location.
He has filed a formal police report on Monday about the incident, and which he was told would be taken seriously but that ultimately they may not be able to do anything. As of Thursday the 11th the police have not visited his office to see the actual screen or message.
Kotler’s friend, Batya Jaffe said in an email to the Post “This wasn’t just a prank — it’s a brazen digital attack in one of the most visible spots in the city, raising big questions about the vulnerability of public screens and the potential for abuse.”
This has unmistakably damaged his sense of trust in the public domain and poses a wider question for all of us as to how much we can truly feel confident in open displays and public WiFi as it is clearly less secure than we would care to acknowledge.