Germany is investigating a cyber attack, Russia suspects

By TOC

BERLIN, ($1=0.84 Euros) – The General Prosecutor’s Office of Germany is investigating a hacker attack before the elections, in which Russia is suspected, BulgarianMilitary.com has learned, referring to Spiegel on Thursday.

A spokesman for the supervisory agency confirmed to the magazine that Chief Prosecutor Peter Frank was “investigating a large-scale Russian cyberattack campaign before the Bundestag elections.” We are talking about the hacker group Ghostwriter, which has been trying for many months to use phishing e-mails to gain access to the personal e-mail boxes of members of the federal and state parliaments.

“According to the conviction of the German law enforcement agencies, the Russian military intelligence service GRU is behind the attacks,” the magazine reported. The hackers mainly attack the politicians of the two big parties – HDZ and SPD.

On September 6, German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse confirmed media reports of hackers on the eve of the German election, according to the ministry, coming from Russia. According to Sasse, the call to stop these actions “was addressed to the Russian authorities, most recently during the meeting of the German-Russian working group on security policy, which took place last week, September 2 and 3.”

The Bundestag elections are scheduled for September 26.

GRU’s 85th main special center is behind hundreds of cyberattacks

As we reported in July this year, the intelligence services of Britain and the United States claim that a Russian military unit known as “Military Unit 26165” and the 85th major special center of the GRU has caused hundreds of cyberattacks around the world, targeting governments and individuals.

Several government agencies on the island and the ocean support their claims with reports and a joint document released today. These are the US Internal Security Agency, the US Infrastructure and Cyber ​​Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the UK National Cybersecurity Center.

From the beginning of 2019 to the beginning of 2021 <…> GRU conducted widespread attempts at access against hundreds of public and private targets around the world,” the text reads.

“The malicious activity in the cybersphere of the 85th main special center of the GRU was previously attributed to the private sector, using the names [hacker groups] Fancy Bear, APT28, Strontium and many others,” the document said.

The intelligence services of the two countries claim that such actions are known and according to them, they will continue in the future.

We remind you that at the end of 2020, the Associated Press published an article claiming that Russian hackers were behind the cyberattacks against US federal agencies. The allegations also included then-US President Donald Trump. According to him, these cyberattacks are not as bad as the country’s media claim. He even stressed that the investigation has not yet proven Russia’s involvement.

“When something happens, the media starts talking in unison about the Russian trail. This path is their priority, because in the first place, for financial reasons, they are scared to death to discuss the possibility that China is behind everything. But it is possible,” the president said.

The issue of Russian cyberattacks has been a hot topic in the United States for years and a problem for the White House. We remind you that in early June, the White House announced that it would launch anti-hacking operations against mostly Russian hackers.

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