Germany holds Russia responsible for a cyber-attack on the Social Democratic Party
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday that Berlin holds a unit of the Russian Military Intelligence Service (GRU) responsible for a 2023 cyber-attack on the Social Democratic Party, to which Chancellor Olaf Scholz belongs.
“Russian state-affiliated hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace,” Baerbock said in Adelaide during a visit to Australia, adding that there would be consequences.
In June 2023, the Social Democratic Party – the dominant party in Germany’s ruling coalition – said that email accounts belonging to its executive administration had been the target of a cyber-attack earlier that year.
The Social Democratic Party attributed this to a security vulnerability in the software company Microsoft, which wasn’t known at the time of the attack; A Social Democratic Party spokesman said, “It cannot be ruled out that data leaked from some email boxes”.
According to Baerbock, the German government’s investigation into this matter led by the Foreign Ministry has now concluded, and she said, “We can now clearly attribute this attack that occurred last year to the APT28 group, which is controlled by the Russian intelligence service… This is completely unacceptable and will not go without consequences”.
