Last week, on March 6, a group of hackers replaced the online broadcasts of several Bulgarian TV channels with the meme about Russian President Vladimir Putin, called Gay Clown Putin.
Gay Clown Putin appeared on Bulgarian air with the anti-war caption, Make Love, Not War. The viral meme was featured on several Bulgarian national television channels, including NOVA TV, Bloomberg TV Bulgaria, Bulgaria On Air, and Bulgarian National Television.
According to Novinite.com, Bulgaria’s largest English-language news agency, and Bulgaria On Air, a viral meme was shown on the screen for several hours as a result of a hacker attack, with some TV stations shutting down until Monday, with Bloomberg and Bulgaria On Air shutting down. .
The hackers, whose identities are not yet known, managed to penetrate into the domain system of the TV channel service provider using the existing vulnerabilities.
The cyber-attack came after Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mikhail Fedorov, issued a statement on February 26 calling on amateur or professional hackers to join forces to fight Russian forces.
Fedorov said in a statement that Ukraine wants to create an IT army to fight Russia, and added a link to the telegram group, which soon gained more than 35,000 users.
Since the group was formed, hackers volunteering to distribute footage of the ongoing war in Ukraine, have hacked numerous Russian media pages and stolen files from Russian government agencies.
The famous internet meme, which depicts Vladimir Putin against the background of the LGBTQ flag, appeared on the social network Tumblr in 2013 in protest of Russia’s “gay propaganda” law. Since then, viral memes have often been used for protests in various parts of the country.
