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On October 8, 2022, Iran’s state television broadcast was briefly interrupted by protest images, including an image of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in crosshairs. The group Edalat-e Ali claimed responsibility, but Iran’s state broadcaster disputed that the incident was a hack, describing it instead as “vandalism and infiltration” from within the channel.
What appeared during the interruption
The interruption occurred while the channel was showing footage of Khamenei meeting officials. The replacement material included his image with crosshairs and flames, photographs of Mahsa Amini and other women killed during the unrest, and protest messages. Iran International’s October 8 report described the text “The Blood of Our Youths Is on Your Hands” during the main news program. RFE/RL reported an appeal to “join us and rise up,” while Sky News reported that the protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” could be heard.
The imagery and slogans made the interruption a political protest message aimed at the government and its response to demonstrations, rather than evidence by themselves of who carried it out or how access to the broadcast was obtained.
Was Iran’s state TV hacked?
Contemporaneous accounts used different descriptions. RFE/RL reported that semiofficial Tasnim said the news broadcast “was hacked for a few moments by anti-revolutionary agents.” Hassanein Haddad, identified by RFE/RL as a spokesman for Iran State Radio and Television, rejected the word “hack,” calling the event an act of “vandalism and infiltration” from within the channel itself.
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Those are competing characterizations, not independent technical findings. The interruption is commonly described as a hack in news coverage, but the available reporting does not establish whether outsiders penetrated broadcast systems, someone inside the channel intervened, or what precise method was used.
Who was behind it?
Edalat-e Ali, also rendered as Ali’s Justice, claimed responsibility, according to RFE/RL. That claim identifies who publicly took credit; it does not independently verify the people involved or establish who executed the interruption. The sources reporting the October 8 incident do not independently confirm the perpetrators’ identity or attribute the operation to a particular state actor.
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Why Khamenei appeared in crosshairs
The crosshairs were part of the interruption’s protest imagery directed at Iran’s supreme leader and government. The message appeared amid demonstrations following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died in police custody in September 2022 after being arrested over her head covering. Coverage connected the broadcast’s slogans and images to protests against the government and Iran’s strict hijab law. The sources do not establish a more specific operational or personal motive behind the choice of crosshairs.
Do not confuse it with the January 2022 IRIB cyberattack
A technical paper presented by Alexandra Gofman, Israel Gubi, and Itay Cohen of Check Point at Virus Bulletin in September 2022 examines a separate attack on Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, in January 2022. That paper discusses malware and tools used to replace broadcast content and evidence of a wiper; its authors say the initial access method in that earlier case remained unclear.
The paper does not analyze or establish how the October 8 crosshairs interruption was carried out. Its technical findings should not be transferred to the October event.
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