A display PC inside a Walmart has been hijacked to stream on Twitch, simply with the username ‘Walmart00012’, amassing over 3,000 concurrent viewers before being made “temporarily unavailable”.
Walmart might not be the first place you think of when it comes to purchasing a PC. However, its stores across the globe have a dedicated section for various pieces of tech and a handful of accessories. It appears that one mystery customer has hijacked a PC at Walmart, installed OBS, and was live streaming from it on Twitch.
The stream was been ongoing for over 37 hours, amassing over 3,000 viewers concurrently. With the store now open, unsuspecting Walmart shoppers are unknowingly being captured without their consent. This appears to have incited the ire of Twitch, which has now made the channel “temporarily unavailable” due to “a violation of Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.”
According to SullyGnome, the stream has been watched for over 306 hours so far, at its peak, the stream attained over 3,600 concurrent viewers.
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How is the hijacked PC streaming on Twitch?
It’s likely that the administrator permissions on the hijacked PC were not set correctly, allowing anyone using the demo unit to install any software they so choose. Therefore, it’s likely that the mystery shopper who set up the stream did so by creating a new Twitch account, installing OBS, using the PC’s built-in webcam in order to output a display, the Twitch chat, as well as a timestamp to prove that the stream has not been prerecorded.
In order to go undetected, it’s also possible that the person who set up the stream has switched windows over to the usual “Demo” mode display that regularly appears on PCs being showcased at retail.
The stream has been subject to several minor outages, but this is likely due to the internet connection within the store, rather than anything going awry with the computer itself. Wondering how to stream yourself? Check out our handy guide. We wouldn’t recommend that you step into a Walmart and stream from there, though.
