Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hundreds of German Lawmakers Targeted in Mass Cyber Attack (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the privacy-woes dept.

A stolen cache of personal information belonging to nearly 1,000 German politicians -- including outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel -- has been leaked, according to a report published Thursday. From a report: The information includes everything from phone numbers and credit card details to private messages with family members, German media said. The hack has impacted national, regional and EU politicians from all major parties except for members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative fur Deutschland, or AfD) party. Journalists, musicians, comedians and activists were also targeted. There is currently no indication of who was behind the attack, but the hacker or hackers leaked information for more than a month on Twitter before the media picked it up.

The scale of the hack was first reported by RBB, leading Justice Minister Katarina Barley to call it a "serious attack" Friday morning. "The people behind this want to damage confidence in our democracy and institutions," Barley said. The federal office for information security (BSI) said Friday it was investigating, adding that government networks had not been affected.

9 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Except the far-right ADF you say? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seems like a rather big clue that they went after everyone exact the far-right AFD. If it wasn't an AFD member/supporter it must be someone supporting the far right.

    That alone means it's probably going to backfire. Any revelations that emerge from this will probably be overshadowed by the investigation, which is bound to pull in prominent AFD members and politicians.

    Can anyone comment on the timing too? Seems a bit random, is there something happening I'm not aware of?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Except the far-right ADF you say? by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

      According to Wikipedia, they're the third largest party and hold approximately 1/7 of the seats in the federal parliament.

      It seems unlikely that they would be missed by chance. Now the question becomes a matter of why they were likely excluded. It certainly could be that the hackers are sympathetic with that party, or it could be that whoever did the hacking wants to stir up even more shit be leaving an obvious group out of the leaks. If it were an outside antagonist like Russians (they're always at least a suspect) they'd probably want to create the largest amount of chaos. Weakening your opponent is good, but stirring the various factions up against each other and letting your opponents tear themselves apart from in-fighting is far more effective.

    2. Re:Except the far-right ADF you say? by twms2h · · Score: 3

      The AFD is a rather recent phenomenon. It's possible that their data isn't included beause the actual leak is so old that there simply wasn't anything available about them from that source.

    3. Re:Except the far-right ADF you say? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      So, when team Obama was illegally wiretapping EU leaders it was because it must have been the far right?

      Come on buddy, you can do better than a complete non-sequitur into an Obama attack.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. OR... alternatively those guys secure their accnts by gDLL · · Score: 2, Insightful

    could it be that of all people the right takes security more seriously than the pie-in-the-sky people ? Just an idea....

  3. Re:Where is your GDPR now????? by Mr.+Dollar+Ton · · Score: 2

    You're a bit slow on the uptake, but first, the data was collected over a long period, when GDPR was not yet a law and second, GDPR finally clarified that online business has certain responsibilities towards its customers. We can argue if it goes far enough or if it is effective, but it was a step in the right direction.

    Especially given the lack of the online businesses to self-regulate appropriately.

  4. Re:OR... alternatively those guys secure their acc by SirSlud · · Score: 2, Insightful

    that should have felt as dumb to type as it was to read

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  5. What was hacked into? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No mention of the system hacked. So how do they know they got data on some parties and not others? What system has all that data on all those people?

  6. Re:OR... alternatively those guys secure their acc by fazig · · Score: 2

    They've been the target of cyber attacks in the past. The prominent ones among the AfD also uses twitter extensively.

    It's very doubtful that their own actions prevented them from having their informations leaked.