BBC Implies Cyber-Attack on Its Persian Service Came From Iran
- Posted on March 14, 2012 at 3:25pm by
Liz Klimas
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BBC newsroom (Photo: BBC)
BBC’s Persian service, which provides Farsi-language TV, radio and online news, appears to have suffered a cyber-attack that officials are saying most likely would have been issued by Iranian authorities.
Reuters reports that the news service’s broadcasts to Iran were inundated with attempts to jam satellites and that it received a slew of automated phone calls to its London office. Reuter‘s has more on the attack from BBC’s director general Mark Thompson:
“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,” he said.
“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,” he added.
Reuters also notes that last month Thompson accused Iran of threatening families of BBC journalists in an effort to get them to quit.
BBC has said it is not providing timing or more details on the nature of the attack. BBC reports that email and other online services were inaccessible for some parts of the corporation on 1 March, but it has not been confirmed if this incident is related.
BBC states that Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
[H/T Gizmodo]
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the_united_states_of_britain
Posted on March 15, 2012 at 3:17pmWho else cares enough to bring it down. Quite clearly was iran. But who in reality gives a crap. I just hope my tax doesn’t fund it.
Report Post »mike_trivisonno
Posted on March 15, 2012 at 10:58amThe BBC; 2nd rate reporting from 3rd world countries.
The BBC; dawa tool of The House of Islam.
Report Post »LibertarianRight
Posted on March 14, 2012 at 8:09pmYeah. More unprovable assertions against Iran. War propaganda is fun. Too bad millions of Americans will die in WWIII when we go to war with Iran (and Russia, China, and the rest of the Muslim world) over a nonexistent nuke program.
In an April 2010 interview with the BBC, former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said Western nations were seeking harsher sanctions “out of frustration”. “I don’t think Iran is developing, or we have new information that Iran is developing, a nuclear weapon today .. there is a concern about Iran’s future intentions, but even if you talk to MI6 or the CIA, they will tell you they are still four or five years away from a weapon. So, we have time to engage,” he said.
A 2009 U.S. congressional research paper says U.S. intelligence believes Iran ended “nuclear weapon design and weaponization work” in 2003. This is based on the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate claiming the same thing – a claim that has not changed in its updates through at least 2011.
On 8 January 2012, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledged on Face the Nation that Iran was not trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
But let’s vote for Romney, Santorum, or Obama so we can ignore all this and start another World War. For kicks.
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on March 14, 2012 at 6:58pmTesting 1-2-3…
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