Hundreds of politicians from Germany, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, have seen their personal information leaked online
Twitter has exposed contacts, private chats and
financial information belonging to members of all political parties in Germany,
with the exception of AFD, an extreme right-wing political organization,
according to experts in cybersecurity and digital forensics from the
International Institute of Cyber Security. According to the reports, personal
information of celebrities and journalists has also been leaked.
The identity of the author or perpetrators of
the attack is still unknown. Via Twitter,
the perpetrators shared files were they published the compromised information for
a whole month.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer
mentioned that the authorities were working to find the origin of the attack. The
minister also pointed out that there is no evidence that Germany’s governmental
or parliamentary systems have been compromised.
Cybersecurity experts say that, apparently, information leaking originated in a
Twitter account operated from the German city of Hamburg; Germany’s law
enforcement agencies are working with Ireland’s data protection commissioner to
stop the Internet circulation of this sensitive information. Because the main
offices of Twitter Europe are in Dublin, this incident is under the
jurisdiction of the Irish regulatory authorities, the experts mentioned.
Cyberattack scope
The German government claims to be unaware of
the true scope of this cyberattack, although Katarina Barley, the Minister of
Justice, has declared that it is a “serious attack.” “The people behind this
incident are trying to harm the trust in our democracy and institutions,” he
mentioned. Martina Fietz, a government spokesperson, said that no confidential
data were published from the Chancellery. Instead, deputies, MEPs and local
Congress legislators have been affected.
Although there is no evidence that highly
sensitive or confidential information has been leaked, the German Government
considers that the consequences could be considerable due to the large volume
of leaked information.
The Twitter account where the leaked
information was posted identified by the German government as @ _ 0rbit, was
followed by more than 17k people. According to specialists in cybersecurity,
the account has already been suspended from the Twitter platform. The leaked
information began to be published between December 1st and 28, although the
government learned of the incident until last Thursday.
The Minister of the Interior mentioned that,
according to the first analyses, data were obtained through the misuse of login
information for cloud services, email accounts or social networking platforms.
The German government supports the hypothesis
that right-wing groups in Germany or Russia might be behind these attacks. Sven
Herpig, a consultant on cybersecurity, believes that Russians are the main
suspects because of the method used to deploy the attack, and because Germany
will hold state and European Parliament elections this year.
