On Monday, the German Foreign Ministry accused Russia of attempting to steal data from lawmakers to spread disinformation about Germany’s political institutions ahead of its parliamentary elections on September 26.
The Ministry alleged that Russia’s motivation behind the cyberattacks is to manipulate the outcome of the elections through a disinformation campaign. While accusing Russia of phishing, the Ministry claimed it has “reliable information,” proving that the Russian intelligence targeted several national and regional German politicians with suspicious emails to steal information.
The German Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Andrea Sasse, said, “Germany views this unacceptable activity as a danger to the security of the Federal Republic of Germany and for the process of democratic decision-making, and as a severe strain on bilateral relations.”
She urged the Russian government to terminate these activities with “immediate effect.” The spokesperson noted that German State Secretary Miguel Berger presented the demand directly to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov last week at a security policy meeting.
Furthermore, Sasse claimed that the Russian hacker group Ghostwriter had been combining conventional cyberattacks with disinformation and influencing campaigns to target German institutions “for some time now.” Several lawmakers from the governing coalition parties, such as the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) or the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPU), have been subjected to this data theft and hacking.
In fact, in May of last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a scathing rebuke of the “outrageous” cyberattack by Russian military intelligence on the German parliament in 2015 after she claimed to have obtained “hard evidence” of Russian interference. German news outlet Der Spiegel reported that Russian military intelligence obtained e-mails from Merkel’s parliamentary office and Germany’s lower house of parliament–the Bundestag–in 2015. Over 16 gigabytes of data were stolen, including confidential e-mails from lawmakers. The hackers also copied two of Merkel’s e-mail accounts, which contained correspondence from 2012 to 2015.
At the time, Merkel expressed severe doubt about the possibility of “good relations” with Russia going forward.
The latest operation, led by Ghostwriter, also resembles the 2018 disinformation campaign launched by another Russian group, Snake, to hack German officials’ emails and sensitive information. Germany stated that it has repeatedly suffered Russia’s “ongoing” cyberattacks, bringing them to the point of “protest” against it. Sasse repeatedly emphasised that these operations are “unacceptable” and the German “government reserves the right to take further measures.”
In August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will step down from her post after nearly 16 years, met Russian President Vladimir Putin during her last official visit to Moscow. The two leaders disagreed on various issues, and the meeting concluded on an extremely open-ended note regarding the future of Germany-Russia bilateral relations.