Iranian state TV streaming site targeted with dissident message
2 February 2022, 11:54
A video showed a masked man and a muffled voice saying Iran’s government ‘will no longer silence us’.
A streaming website that features Iranian state television programming has acknowledged suffering technical issues amid reports that dissident hackers played an anti-government message on the platform.
Telewebion said it suffered “infrastructure” irregularities and an archive failure on Tuesday, without elaborating on the cause.
The problems came as a video message circulated online claiming to be from a self-described group of hackers called The Justice of Ali in Farsi.
In the video, which Farsi-language news networks abroad said played on the streaming platform, a masked man appears and a muffled voice says Iran’s government “will no longer silence us”.
“We’ll burn hijabs. We’ll burn their pictures and propaganda posters,” the man says.
“We will break their idols. We will reveal their palaces so that the people can punish them.”
The Justice of Ali released footage in August showing grim condition at Iran’s notorious Evin prison, which it claimed it obtained through a hack.
The video came just ahead of commemoration ceremonies for Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution this month.
It also followed an apparent hack last Thursday that saw multiple channels of Iran’s state television broadcast images showing the leaders of an exiled dissident group and a graphic calling for the death of the country’s supreme leader.
The incident on Tuesday potentially marks the latest in a series of embarrassing cyber attacks against the Islamic Republic, as world powers struggle to revive a tattered nuclear deal with Tehran.
Other attacks, which Iran has blamed on Israel, have targeted its nuclear programme.
In October, an assault on Iran’s fuel distribution system paralysed petrol stations nationwide, leading to long queues of angry motorists unable to get subsidised fuel for days.
An earlier cyber attack on Iran’s railway system caused chaos and train delays.
