Visitors to Spain's EU presidency website have been greeted by an image of hapless fictional character Mr Bean instead of Spain's Socialist leader.An unidentified hacker briefly hijacked the site on Monday, replacing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with that of a bumbling comedy buffoon. In Spain, the similarity between Mr Zapatero and the Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson, is a long-standing joke. The government said the site itself, www.eu2010.es, had not been attacked.
Visitors to Spain's EU presidency website have been greeted by an image of hapless fictional character Mr Bean instead of Spain's Socialist leader.
An unidentified hacker briefly hijacked the site on Monday, replacing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with that of a bumbling comedy buffoon.
In Spain, the similarity between Mr Zapatero and the Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson, is a long-standing joke.
The government said the site itself, www.eu2010.es, had not been attacked.
At the time of writing, this story is the second most read story on El Mundo - Spain's second biggest newspaper. It was also covered by El Pais, the biggest newspaper in Spain. The Financial Times covered it. Der Spiegel covered it. Le Monde, The Guardian, Reuters, AFP, Fox News, Sky News, The Huffington Post and ABC all covered it. This morning it was the second `most shared' and the seventh `most read' story on the BBC. There was even a (not very funny) spoof version of the story published. Still, it's a fairly minor story in the mainstream media. Not exactly the Watergate scandal, is it? For the EU blogosphere, however, this story was Beangate. Julien Frisch, the blogger El Mundo linked to when the story went mainstream, admitted on Twitter that the "hard truth for EU politics [is that] today's the day with the most visitors/hits on my blog ever due to [the Spanish Presidency] web issue." It's easy to see why. The story was perfect fodder for any mainstream journalist: In the very first week of the Spanish EU Council Presidency hackers broke into the eu2010.es website and uploaded pictures of Mr. Bean (who looks a bit like Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero - see here, here and here). Oh, and the website was reported to have cost 12 million euros (despite being based on Open Source software) whilst Spain is stuck in economic stagnation. It's the perfect combination of humour, outrage and anarchist hacker cool.
Still, it's a fairly minor story in the mainstream media. Not exactly the Watergate scandal, is it? For the EU blogosphere, however, this story was Beangate. Julien Frisch, the blogger El Mundo linked to when the story went mainstream, admitted on Twitter that the "hard truth for EU politics [is that] today's the day with the most visitors/hits on my blog ever due to [the Spanish Presidency] web issue."
It's easy to see why. The story was perfect fodder for any mainstream journalist: In the very first week of the Spanish EU Council Presidency hackers broke into the eu2010.es website and uploaded pictures of Mr. Bean (who looks a bit like Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero - see here, here and here). Oh, and the website was reported to have cost 12 million euros (despite being based on Open Source software) whilst Spain is stuck in economic stagnation. It's the perfect combination of humour, outrage and anarchist hacker cool.
