Spain’s +24 Russian hack shows banned separatist
December 18, 2019
Spain’s public broadcaster has inadvertently carried an interview with the exiled Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont after hackers broke into its online news stream with an interview from Russia’s state-backed RT network.
The hack meant Spanish TV’s +24 channel showed RT’s interview between Puigdemont and the former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa.
RT’s boss, Margarita Simonyan, appeared to revel in the embarrassment the incident had caused but said the network was not responsible. “Hackers got into the Spanish +24 channel and switched their transmission for ours,” she said. “We ended up having an interview with Puigdemont, the main Catalan independence leader. Our transmission lasted the whole evening. We don’t know who did it but it was beautiful.”
The Spanish broadcaster confirmed that an investigation was under way to determine what had happened but said it was too early to draw any conclusions.
Other posts by Nick Snow: