Germany accuses Russia of “intolerable” cyber attack and warns of consequences | Russia-Ukraine War News

May 3, 2024 Vaseline stjohnson 0

Germany blamed “state-sponsored” Russian hackers for an “intolerable” cyber attack against members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and warned there would be consequences.

On Friday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she had just concluded an investigation by the German federal government into who was behind the 2023 cyberattack against the SPD, a leading member of the ruling coalition.

“Today we can say unambiguously that we can attribute this cyberattack to a group called APT28, led by Russia’s military intelligence service,” he said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide.

“In other words, it was a state-sponsored Russian cyberattack against Germany, and this is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences.”

APT28, also known as Fancy Bear or Pawn Storm, has been accused of dozens of cyberattacks around the world.

The attack on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD became public last year and was attributed to a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook.

Germany’s Federal Interior Ministry said German companies, including those in the defense, aerospace and information technology sectors, as well as targets related to Russia’s war in Ukraine were also the focus of the attacks.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the campaign was orchestrated by the Russian military intelligence service GRU and began in 2022.

A spokesman for Germany’s Federal Foreign Office said Friday that the acting chargé d’affaires of the Russian embassy in Berlin has been summoned.

The cyberattack demonstrated “that the Russian threat to security and peace in Europe is real and enormous,” the spokesperson said.

Russia has denied previous accusations by Western governments of being behind cyberattacks. On Friday, her embassy in Germany said it “categorically rejects accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the incident in question…as groundless and unfounded.”

The Czech Republic’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the country’s institutions had also been targeted by APT28 by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook from 2023.

“Cyber ​​attacks targeting political entities, state institutions and critical infrastructure are not only a threat to national security, but also disrupt the democratic processes on which our free society is based,” the ministry said. He did not provide details on the targets.

The European Union condemned the “malicious cyber campaign carried out by the Russian-controlled Advanced Persistent Threat Actor 28 (APT28) against Germany and the Czech Republic.”

NATO said APT28 targeted “other national government entities and critical infrastructure operators” across the alliance, including Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden.

“We are determined to employ the capabilities necessary to deter, defend and counter the full spectrum of cyber threats to support each other, including considering coordinated responses,” said the North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body within NATO.

‘Concrete signs’ of Russian origin

The EU’s cybersecurity response unit, CERT-EU, noted last year a German media report that an SPD executive had been the target of a cyberattack in January 2023, “resulting in possible exposure.” of data”.

He said there were reportedly “concrete signs” that he was of Russian origin.

Baerbock spoke after a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who said: “We have previously joined the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand in attributing malicious cyber activity to APT28.”

It is not the first time that Russian hackers have been accused of spying on Germany.

In 2020, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany found “strong evidence” that Russian hackers had attacked it.

One of the most high-profile incidents so far attributed to Russian hackers was a cyberattack in 2015 that paralyzed the computer network of the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, forcing the entire institution to go offline for days while it was repaired.