Federal Telecommunications Service
With a call at 2 a.m.: hacker wants to have exposed secret service behind mysterious authority
Exposed: Berlin hacker and IT activist Lilith Wittmann is pretty sure who is behind the Federal Telecommunications Service.
© Jens Krick/Geisler-Fotopress / Picture Alliance
Lilith Wittmann claims to have made it: The camouflage of the Federal Telecommunications Service is gone. Her exciting research is reminiscent of the work of a secret service.
A few days ago, the Berlin IT activist and hacker Lilith Wittmann came across an unusual entry in an official federal directory for departments of all authorities. A so-called Federal Telecommunications Service was on display. The experienced expert, who often deals with authorities, did not know him – and she asked official bodies. only reaction? The entry disappeared from said list and no one commented on the case. But it couldn’t be a dead card because there’s a matching mailbox attached to the address. This is where the second part of the research on the federal telecommunications service begins, which Wittmann explains step by step described in her blog.
2500 square meters – for what?
So for Wittmann, after hints from fellow seekers on the Property management website from said office complex to find out relatively quickly that behind the mailbox there is a 2500 square meter office rented to a “Federal Ministry”. The screenshot of this statement can be found in their blog, it has disappeared from the website – known patterns. And although this information initially proved to be a dead end, Wittmann paid a visit to the address. There was not much to see other than drawn curtains and impeccably maintained VW T6 buses in the underground car park. All the same, Wittmann recognized the buses from other reports on the protection of the constitution.
Then we went back to the computer. Wittmann rummaged through the so-called RIPE database. Put simply, this is a land register for European IP addresses. According to the motto: Who actually owns the connection at this address? Lo and behold: there is a man in the database for Berlin with an email address from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. But if you decode this address, you guessed it, you hit granite. An address like “Z27_1@…” actually contains information about the department, the sub-department, the unit and the post office box. But none of this is of any use if the departments in question are missing from the ministry’s organizational chart.
BMI addresses that actually don’t exist
Fast forward – after further excursions into public databases, the following was certain: the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) is located at the address in Berlin. According to official information, the BMI is not located there. Not even in Cologne, where another database entry leads to a well-known pattern. However, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is located near both addresses and, according to RIPE, both entries share a previously unknown e-mail scheme, which goes to “@bmi-location” is, but is apparently not used in this form by the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
At this point in her research, Wittmann combines the clues in such a way that she gets the impression that the Federal Telecommunications Service is a front office for the protection of the constitution. In short: one star-Request to the Federal Ministry of the Interior dated January 13 remains unanswered. There was also no answer to such a question from journalist Tilo Jung, which he asked during a federal press conference.
But: Even if the interviewed employees of the Federal Ministry of the Interior know about it, they do not have to provide any information on a camouflage identity of an authority according to Section 8 Paragraph 2 of the Federal Constitutional Protection Act. On January 18, 2022, at 1:58 a.m., Wittmann decided to dial the phone numbers from the RIPE database. And it rings.
It’s two in the morning
In fact, a man called the number of the BMI Treptow and introduced himself according to the entry in the database. Wittmann takes him by surprise and asks the question that has been on her mind for days: “Do I speak to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution?” Unsurprisingly, and only one more question later, he replies: “Let’s stop talking here!”. End.
Lilith Wittmann immediately writes him an e-mail, using all the abbreviations she knows from the authorities where she suspects his mailbox. Lo and behold: The address with the ending “@bfv” goes through, the rest comes back with an error. “bfv” stands for “Federal Protection of the Constitution”. Bingo.
She follows the same pattern in Cologne and calls them there as well, but they don’t want to know anything about the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, they pretend to be a call center for the Federal Ministry of the Interior. We remember: The BMI does not officially have a location in Cologne, nor officially in Berlin. Why then a call center that pretends to be one?
An Airtag goes on a journey
In order to confirm her theory despite everything, Wittmann is now sending mail. A travel newspaper with a hidden Airtag, Apple’s search chip (read the test here), goes to the mailbox of the BMI Cologne, whose number Wittmann pulled from the public RIPE database. And where does it arrive? In the building of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne-Chorweiler.
You can find out why Wittmann went to the trouble and what demands she derived from this in the blog of the IT expert.