BBC News’ outlet BBC Presia was reportedly hacked by Iranian authorities this evening. The news group claims that the cyberattack is part of an expanding effort by the regime to stifle coverage within the country.
BBC Persia’s director-general, Mark Thompson, reported that BBC’s London office was inundated with robo-calls and also that a group had attempted to jam the company’s satellite feeds into Iran. The jamming would only affect owners of illegal satellite dishes (which, not coincidentally, are the only ones that can receive the BBC signal).
Thompson is expected to release an official statement tomorrow regarding these attacks. The contents of that statement have already been released to the BBC and contain a strongly worded statement that stops just short of J’ACUSE!
“There was a day recently when there was a simultaneous attempt to jam two different satellite feeds of BBC Persian into Iran, to disrupt the Service’s London phone-lines by the use of multiple automatic calls, and a sophisticated cyber-attack on the BBC,” the statement reads, in part. “It is difficult, and may prove impossible, to confirm the source of these attacks, though attempted jamming of BBC services into Iran is nothing new and we regard the coincidence of these different attacks as self-evidently suspicious.”
This attack follows other strong-arm tactics by the Iranian government including harassing, arresting and threatening the relatives of BBC Persia correspondents who still lived there, eliminating VPN networks and various forms of sabre-rattling. [Reuters]
Image: AP