Russian hackers attack websites of German authorities, ministries and politicians
According to an internal report by the authorities, the pro-government Russian activist group “Killnet” has caused disruptions on the websites of German authorities and ministries with hacker attacks. Security authorities rate the attacks as retaliatory actions for German arms deliveries.
Regimetreue Russian hackers have carried out cyber attacks on the websites of German security authorities, ministries and politicians and temporarily paralyzed them. How out Research by the news magazine “Spiegel” shows that the federal police and several state police authorities were among those affected. According to an internal report by the authorities, the Bundestag, the Federal Ministry of Defense and the SPD website of Chancellor Olaf Scholz were also among the targets of the hacker campaign. Some of the websites were temporarily unavailable due to the overload attacks.
According to the assessment of the security authorities, the so-called “Distributed Denial of Service” (DDoS) attacks are acts of retaliation for German arms deliveries to Ukraine. The pro-Russian activist group “Killnet” is said to be responsible for these technically relatively simple attacks. She confessed to the attacks on German websites in the Telegram messenger service.
The Central Office for Combating Internet Crime at the Attorney General’s Office in Frankfurt am Main has started investigations into the “Killnet” attacks. The authority assumes that an attack on the website of the Hessian state police is also related to the activist group.
Ministries confirm the disruptions
The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior confirmed to the “Spiegel” that there had been an attack on the website of the state police there at the beginning of the week and the site was offline for a short time. The Federal Ministry of Defense also admitted that “our websites bundeswehr.de and bmvg.de were temporarily unavailable several times in the past few days”. The Bavarian Ministry of the Interior also confirmed an attack on the state police’s website. However, the result was only longer loading times.
A spokesman for the Bundestag spoke of an “unsuccessful attempt at attack”. The federal police reported a “brief disruption without significant effects”. The SPD did not want to confirm or deny an attack on Olaf Scholz’s website.
In mid-April, “Killnet” had already attacked the website of the German Reconstruction Loan Corporation (KfW), making it almost impossible to reach it for several hours. The websites of the airports in Hamburg and Bremen could also not be accessed for a while in mid-April.