Hackers interrupt German council meeting with porn broadcast

A local council meeting on Germany's Lake Constance was disrupted this week when hackers took control of the online broadcast to play a pornographic video.

Swastikas also appeared on the presentation, a spokeswoman for the municipality of Bodman-Ludwigshafen told dpa, describing the incident as "very disturbing."

Around 20 participants in the room and up to five people online were present at the meeting on Tuesday, she said.

The council has been broadcasting its local council meetings online for years so that interested citizens can watch from home, she explained, meaning the access data for the meeting was publicly available.

Two unknown users took control of the Zoom video platform and shared pornographic clips on their screens, which were broadcast in the meeting room, the spokeswoman said.

Mayor Christoph Stolz stopped the broadcast after a few seconds.

It is still unclear exactly how the attack was carried out. "We are now looking into how we can make access more secure in future and prevent and track such incidents," Stolz told the Südkurier newspaper.

The municipality's spokeswoman said the council will use different software in the medium term. She said the incident had been reported to the police.