Berlin.- Germany summoned Russia’s charge d’affaires in the country following Berlin blamed Kremlin-sponsored hackers for a cyberattack last year once morest members of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD).
“We have summoned the acting chargé d’affaires of the Russian embassy,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told reporters, adding that the government “will use the full spectrum of measures to deter and respond to Russia’s aggressive behavior in cyberspace.” .
The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, accused Russian Military Intelligence this Friday of being behind a cyber attack recorded in 2023 and whose objective was the SPD.
“Russian state hackers attacked German cyberspace,” said Baerbock, who clarified that said attack, recorded at the beginning of last year, affected the email accounts of high-ranking party figures and, therefore, “will have consequences”.
This was expressed during a press conference during his visit to Australia, where he explained that the SPD itself has attributed this cyber attack to a “vulnerability” in terms of security. This problem in the software was “unknown” until the attack occurred, as he has highlighted.
“We can now clearly attribute this attack to the APT28 group, controlled by Russia’s Central Intelligence Department, the country’s military intelligence. This is absolutely unacceptable and will not go unpunished,” said Baerbock.
An SPD spokesperson has revealed on condition of anonymity that “it cannot be ruled out that data leaks of individuals from these email accounts occurred.”
The SPD announced the cyberattack in question in the summer of 2023 and explained that it had taken advantage of a security breach in the Microsoft operating system to gain access to the email accounts of the leaders of the social democratic formation.
A spokeswoman then stated that it might not be excluded that hackers might have stolen data from some email accounts, while the party’s general secretary, Kevin Kühnert, already raised the suspicion that Moscow’s hand was behind the incident.
The same group is also suspected of being responsible for the attack on the systems of the Bundestag (lower house of the German Parliament) in 2015, the server of the American Democratic Party in 2016 and once morest Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign in France in 2017.
(With information from EFE, AFP and EP- Infobae)
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2024-05-06 09:17:59
