Iran's national TV stream hacked for the second time in a week

A hacktivist group known as Adalat Ali (Ali's Justice) has hijacked the web stream of Iran's state-owned television station, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), in order to broadcast an anti-regime message earlier this week.

The incident took place on Tuesday, February 1, and hit Telewebion, IRIB's web-based TV and radio streaming platform.

During a live broadcast of the Iran-UAE soccer match, the Adalat Ali group hijacked the web stream and aired a short 50-second video in which it urged Iranians to rise up in nationwide protests against the ruling Khamenei regime during the Fajr Decade, an 11-day celebration of the 1979 Revolution that takes place each year between February 1 and February 11.

۱/ ویدئوی کوتاه- هک شدن رسانه تلوبیون صدا و سیمای جمهوری اسلامی توسط گروه سایبری عدالت علی. این گروه سایبری با انتشار پیامی می‌گوید: «صدای اعتراضمان را به گوش همگان رساندیم و مردم ایران را به تبدیل کردن دهه فجر به دهه از سرگیری اعتراضات سراسری فراخواندیم» ۱۲ بهمن ۱۴۰۰ pic.twitter.com/sAZbEqCHim

— RadioFarda‌|‌راديو فردا (@RadioFarda_) February 1, 2022

The message was repeated at various intervals for hours before Telewebion regained control over its platform. The streaming service later acknowledged the incident in a tweet later in the day.

IRIB was also hacked last week

However, while only a web stream was disrupted, the incident marks the second time that an IRIB broadcast was disrupted by hackers over the past week.

Another incident also took place last Tuesday, on January 27, when a group of unknown hackers hijacked the main IRIB TV channel signal for around 10 seconds to show images of Maryam and Masoud Rajavi, the leaders of the Mujahideen Khalq Organisation (MKO), the primary political opposition force to Iran's Khamenei government.

The hijack lasted only 10 seconds, and a voice was heard saying: "Salute to Rajavi, death to Khamenei!"

Prior to hacking Telewebion this week, the Adalat Ali hacktivist group previously hacked the internal CCTV system of Evin, a prison complex in Tehran where Iran keeps its political prisoners, and leaked videos showing extensive prisoner abuse, last year, in August.