Aussie Net Hacked, Live Programming Affected

[Mark Jeffries]

Nine Network, one of the two commercial networks in Australia that dominate the ratings in that country, suffered a weekend cyberattack that affected their news and current affairs departments and wreaked havoc on live programming on Sunday (including their morning show "Today") and the news department's web site:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/australias-channel-nine-suffers-cyber-attack-disruption-to-live-broadcasts

Nine says that it may take weeks for its news operations to return to normal.  Besides "Today" and the flagship 6 p.m. regional newscasts, the net's best-known news/current affairs product includes the nightly tabmag "A Current Affair" (inspiration for the American series of the 80s) and their version of "60 Minutes," which has stayed on the air despite ViacomCBS (owners of competing Network 10) only renewing the title and format rights and not the rights to use stories from the American version.

Some believe that the Chinese government may be involved in the hack--the two counties have not been on speaking terms as of late.

[Adam Bowie]

TV channels getting "hacked" seems like it's going to be more of a thing in the future.

A couple of years ago the French TV channel TV5Monde (a channel aimed at the world, and offering French news, documentaries and dramas), was hacked in what was almost certainly a state sponsored attack. 

And TV networks, especially in news environments, are run from big complicated playout systems where story packages are ingested and then played back out. Nobody is rushing around with big tapes like they're on Broadcast News anymore. So it's not hard to conceive that if someone took control of that system, they could massively disrupt a provider's output. I suspect that cyber security teams in networks around the globe will be looking very closely at what happened at Nine and making sure they're locked down as much as possible.

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[John Edwards]

Did they insert a monkey playing cymbals? That would have been an improvement over Nine's morning shows....

It's worth pointing out that Nine is owned by Rupert Murdoch, so that may have made it an attractive target for the hackers, particularly if they feel that Murdoch's news operations are steering Australian policy against China.

John

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John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell

[Mark Jeffries]

The influential Australian media family in this case is--or should I say was--the Packer family.  Nine merged a few years ago with Fairfax, who owns Murdoch's main competition in Melbourne and Sydney and is the only major newspaper owner in the country besides Murdoch.  Murdoch's only TV holdings are the Foxtel cable/satellite system, which includes Sky News Australia, or Fox News Channel with an accent.  He did have some other TV holdings for a while a long time ago.

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[John Edwards]

Sorry, yes, I stand corrected. I knew that Nine and Fairfax had merged, but I forgot who owned what between Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch.

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