“Time” report
Huge data leak in the Bundeswehr: Links to at least 6,000 video conferences were open online
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) was already under pressure as a result of the Taurus wiretapping scandal in the Bundeswehr – now new trouble is looming
© Marcus Brandt / DPA
The damage cannot yet be foreseen: thousands of links to secret Bundeswehr video conferences are said to have been publicly available on the Internet. The leadership tries to appease.
The incident affected the Webex video telephony system, which supposedly allows secure conversations to be held. The German armed forces also use Webex for conversations that are subject to confidentiality levels. Links to at least 6,000 video conferences could be determined by simply counting numbers up and down, writes the weekly newspaper. “This meant you could see the titles, timing and who was inviting you to important meetings.”
Bundeswehr calms down after data leak
In addition to this publicly viewable metadata, according to “Zeit”, unauthorized persons would also have had the opportunity to enter the Bundeswehr’s virtual meeting rooms and take part in meetings there without a password. “The associated URLs (were) particularly easy to combine because they were all structured according to the same principle.”
It is possible that the actually confidential conversation between Bundeswehr officers was recorded in this way, which was distributed via Russian channels in March and put both those affected and Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) in distress (the star reported).
The pressure on the leadership of the Bundeswehr and the Ministry of Defense is likely to increase after the data leak becomes known. There was initially no statement from the government. According to the report, it is still unclear whether criminals or even actors from foreign states, such as Russian secret agents, exploited the security gap. When asked by “Zeit”, the Bundeswehr stated that only metadata from the conversation was publicly available, but not the content of the conversation. Further research must show how credible this is. The Bundeswehr has assured that the vulnerability has now been closed.
Apparently it’s not just the Bundeswehr that is affected by this. “The meeting rooms of Olaf Scholz and Robert Habeck were still open on Saturday,” writes the Hamburg weekly newspaper.
Source: “Time”