Hackers play Space Invaders on Belgrade billboard, get rewarded with iPads

Sadly, far too often we hear about hackers getting punished for their exploits—even when the hack doesn’t really damage anyone. (RIP Aaron Swartz.)

Today, however, two people are being rewarded for a fun, harmless hack. After taking over a prominent electronic billboard in Belgrade, installing Space Invaders on it, and playing it via their iPhones for 20 minutes, two Serbian students were rewarded by the billboard's owner with two iPad mini 4Gs.

“This has never happened before, but we appreciate the fact that these guys have, in a charming way, pointed us to this huge problem,” Slobodan Petrovic, the manager of the billboard ad company, DPC, told Serbian news site Kurir on Wednesday (Google Translate). “Now it is clearer than ever that we need to protect ourselves better. In more developed countries, these actions are unthinkable because of severe sanctions.”