Clear outrage about Russia! Chancellor Angela Merkel (65, CDU) is upset about a hacker attack on her personally. Her verdict: “Outrageous.”
She made this clear on Wednesday afternoon during a question time in the Bundestag. There she also said: “I can honestly say: it hurts me”.
MP Tabea Roessner (Greens) asked about the Russian hacker attack in the Bundestag in 2015, which also included emails from the Chancellor’s MP’s office.
Reason for the question: FBI and German investigators are looking for the alleged perpetrator of the hacker attack in 2015. Suspicious: a Russian secret service hacker!
▶ ︎ The man’s name is Dimitri Badin and is an agent of the Russian military intelligence GRU. The Federal Prosecutor General is said to have even obtained a corresponding arrest warrant from the Federal Court of Justice. Allegation: With his attack he had paralyzed the IT systems of the German Bundestag.
The US federal FBI has Badin already on the slip because of other acts: The Russian hacker group APT 28, aka “Fancy Bear”, is said to have been involved in the hacking attacks on the Democratic Party in the 2016 US presidential campaign.
In addition, the targets of the attacks included the World Doping Agency, the organization for the ban on chemical weapons and the Swiss chemical weapons laboratory in Spiez.
Merkel’s answer
The Chancellor said that she was happy that the investigators were able to find a responsible person.
On the incident itself, Merkel said: “I take this very seriously”. And further: “I can honestly say: it hurts me. On the one hand, I strive for a better relationship with Russia every day. On the other hand, if you see that there is hard evidence that Russian forces are also going to do this, then this is already a field of tension (…) that cannot completely erase from within me. That’s unconfortable.”
“Unpleasant”?
FDP MP Manuel Höferlin asked: “I find the process for this country more than ‘unpleasant'” “.
Merkel agrees: “An aspect is uncomfortable, I find it outrageous by the way.” Not only for himself, but for many other MPs.
“It is of course disruptive of trusting cooperation.” The federal government reserves measures against this and has also imposed sanctions against Russian diplomats after the zoo murder.
There is a strategy for Russia’s hybrid warfare: “We have to take this into account and we cannot suppress it.”
That was the hacker attack on the Bundestag in 2015
It is suspected that sensitive data leaked to the outside world five years ago when the information systems of the German parliament were attacked. Back then, IT experts feared that – similar to the 2016 US election campaign – the data was intended for Russia’s influence on the federal election. In order to repair the damage caused, the entire Parliament had to be taken offline for days.
IT experts were able to collect evidence that the hacking collective called “APT28” and working for the Russian military secret service GRU was responsible. The federal prosecutor then launched an investigation into suspected espionage.
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