Germany defended against two hacking attacks in 2016 by Russian hackers

Germany last year warded off two cyber attacks by APT28, a top official said Friday, referring to a Russian hacking group also dubbed “Fancy Bear” that experts say successfully targeted Hillary Clinton’s U.S. election campaign.

The first, in May 2016, was an attempt to create an Internet domain for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in the Baltic region, said Arne Schoenbohm, president of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

The second attack, several months later, involved a spear-phishing scheme directed against German parties in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. Experts said that attack used a NATO domain name to try to inject malicious software into the networks of politicians.

The hacking of the Democratic National Committee in the United States and the leaking of confidential emails was part of what U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was a campaign ordered by President Vladimir Putin to influence the U.S. election in favour of Donald Trump. The U.S. agencies warned in January that Russia was likely to target other countries in the same way – a concern for European governments in a year when France and Germany are holding major elections, with Merkel seeking a fourth term.

“Germany remains in danger in the cyber arena since we are highly digitised,” Schoenbohm told Reuters in an interview. “The more we digitise, the more dependent we become on networks, the greater the risk of attack.” He said his agency was doing all it could to strengthen Germany’s defences against such attacks by monitoring government networks and educating politicians and parties about how to protect their networks.

“We give them advice and help them with certain measures. But in the end, what each party does is its own responsibility,” Schoenbohm said. Germany was working closely with authorities in the United States, France and elsewhere to compare notes about cyber attacks they had experienced.

Diverse Targets

APT28/Fancy Bear is the same Russian hacking group that officials say stole 16 gigabytes of data from the German parliament in 2015.

It also targeted the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in December, according to U.S. and European security officials, and was responsible for leaking the medical records of top international athletes after Russia’s track and field team was banned from last year’s Olympics for doping.

In December, Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency reported a striking increase in Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns it said were aimed at destabilising German society, as well as cyber attacks targeted against political parties. It gave no details at the time.