The Belgian Telenet and Dutch Ziggo are temporarily removing the BabyTV channel from their offering. The channel was taken over twice in a short time by criminals, who showed Russian propaganda on the channel.
BabyTV is a children's channel from Disney, which is distributed via satellite. The channel was first taken over on April 6. Criminals then hacked satellite company Eutelsat, using which they played a Russian propaganda video on the channel. On April 17, criminals took over the channel again. This time, the attackers reportedly managed to take over the channel for thirteen minutes. More violent images were also shown. It is unclear whether Eutelsat was hacked this time to take over the channel.
A Ziggo spokesperson told NU.nl that he was very shocked by the images that were broadcast. “It is absolutely not the intention that children and babies are exposed to these types of images.” As a precaution, the channel has been blacked out until further notice. The images have also been removed from the archive by Ziggo, so they can no longer be viewed. Telenet has also put the channel on black as a precaution, a spokesperson told VRT. “We are now going to discuss with the broadcaster how we can avoid this in the future at all costs.”
In Belgium, BabyTV is also broadcast by Proximus, but this provider is keeping the channel on the air for the time being. “Proximus receives a secure stream of images directly from Disney and not from Eutelsat, where the risk occurred,” a spokesperson told VRT. Proximus was therefore not affected by the takeover on April 6. “We are investigating whether that was the case again this time and will then re-evaluate the situation.”