Russian radio station hacked to broadcast Ukrainian hymn

On June 8, the online bulletin broadcast of a Russian radio station, Kommersant FM, was suddenly interrupted to play Ukraine’s hymn and anti-war songs by anti-war hackers to protest against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, the broadcast was quickly taken off the air.

Kommersant FM released the following statement to confirm the cyberattack:

The radio station has been hacked. The internet stream will soon be reinstated.

Kommersant FM’s editor-in-chief, Alexey Vorobyov, told the state-owned news agency, Tass, that the online stream was hacked on June 8, and their technical specialists were figuring out the attack’s origin.

The hacktivists disrupted the lunchtime bulletin of the targeted radio station, which is Kommersant newspaper’s radio offshoot. BBC Monitoring reporter Francis Scarr tweeted that the radio station played the Ukrainian hymn “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow.”

Furthermore, the hackers played Russian rock band Nogu Svelo! ‘s song titled “We Don’t Need a War,” featuring a quote from Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov which means “a tough guy always keeps his word.”

The other day, the notorious Anonymous hacker collective attacked Russia again by leaking nearly 1TB of data stolen from a leading Russian law company identified as Rustam Kurmaev and Partners.