Secret services
Baerbock: Russia responsible for cyber attack on SPD
The focus of Foreign Minister Baerbock’s week-long trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji is security policy and climate protection. photo
© Sina Schuldt/dpa
In January last year, hackers attacked SPD email accounts. The federal government has now completed its investigation – and is announcing consequences.
The federal government is blaming a unit of the Russian military intelligence service GRU for a cyber attack on the SPD responsible at the beginning of last year. “Russian state hackers have attacked Germany in cyberspace,” said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her visit to Australia in Adelaide and announced the consequences.
The SPD announced in June 2023 that email accounts of the SPD party executive had already been the target of a cyber attack in January. The SPD said at the time that this was made possible by a security gap in the software company Microsoft that was still unknown at the time of the attack. “It cannot be ruled out that there was an outflow of data from individual email inboxes,” said an SPD spokeswoman.
According to Baerbock, the federal government’s investigations, led by the Foreign Office, have now been completed. “Today we can clearly attribute this attack from last year to the APT28 group, which is controlled by the Russian secret service GRU,” said the Green politician. “This is completely unacceptable and will not go without consequences.”