Hackers tapped into the feed of a state-owned Spanish news outlet and pushed Russian content for hours before being disconnected.
The hack happened Thursday and replaced content by Televisión Española, a state-owned broadcasting company in Spain, with an interview between former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and former Catalonian separatist leader Carles Puigdemont. The interview originally aired on the state-owned Russian outlet Russia Today.
Correa interviewed Puigdemont about the Catalonian Crisis of 2017 and 2018 in which Catalonia, a region in northern Spain, attempted to form a separate government and declare independence from Spain. Puigdemont led the movement to separate from Spain and was named the president of the Catalonian government.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today, denied that her outlet or the Kremlin was behind the hack but celebrated that Russia Today’s content was broadcast to the Spanish audience.
“The hackers broke into the Spanish channel +24 and put our broadcast instead of theirs,” Simonyan said. “We just had an interview with Puigdemont, who is the main leader for the independence of Catalonia. Our transmission lasted all night. We do not know who did it. But it has been beautiful.”
