First posts blaming Russia for April 28 blackout came from Portugal
The first publications on social media suggesting that the electricity power cut that left the Iberian peninsula in the dark on April 28 may have been caused by a Russian cyberattack, originated in Portugal.
The possibility has been raised by a group of researchers from the ISCTE university’s Medialab in a report released released on Wednesday in partnership with the National Commission of Elections (CNE) that has been monitoring fake news during the 18 May election campaign.
In the report about the general power cut on April 28 that affected both Portugal and Spain and parts of France, the researchers emphasise that “a lack of effective institutional communication in the first hours contributed to an information vacuum” providing fertile ground for conspiracy theories that the Russians were behind the event.
The rumour began to circulate on Portuguese social media around 11:50 am, about 20 minutes after the blackout began, based on publications that reproduced an alleged CNN International news story with statements attributed to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen which were later refuted by the European Commission.
The origin of the publication is uncertain, but the analysis from Medialab researchers indicate that the original dissemination could have started in Portugal, with a version posted in Portuguese which was then translated into other languages, including Russian.
At 1:55 pm, the first ambiguous reactions of Russian ‘media’ also began to emerge, such as BFM, which mixed reported elements with unverified rumours with suggestions of a coordinated attack and transnational sabotage.
According to the report, the information was then replicated on WhatsApp and on Telegram pro-Russian channels that got tens of thousands of visualisations in the first hours after the power cut.
In the following days, groups of pro-Russian cyber-activists claimed responsibility for the alleged attack, associating alleged evidence of distributed denial-of-service attacks, but official Russian government sources in Moscow flatly denied that the Russian government was behind the blackout.
“However, cybersecurity experts consulted ruled out any Russian-backed connection with the blackout, stressing that these groups “do not have the operational capacity to cause power infrastructure failures,” the report says, adding that these groups took advantage of the blackout to try to spread media disinformation.
