Germany’s Foreign Ministry summoned the acting charge d’affaires of the Russian embassy — Russia’s top embassy official — accusing Moscow’s military intelligence agency of launching cyberattacks against Germany’s ruling coalition party dating back to last year.
At a Berlin news briefing Friday, government deputy spokesperson
Wolfgang Büchner told reporters German intelligence agencies have determined Russia’s GRU military intelligence was responsible for a 2023 cyberattack on Germany’s Social Democratic Party or SPD.
In June 2023, the SPD announced that cybercriminals targeted email accounts belonging to its executives earlier that year.
Büchner said the German government — with the backing of the European Union, NATO and “international partners” — condemns “in the strongest possible terms” the campaign by the state-controlled Russian cyberespionage group APT28 or Fancy Bear, under direction of the GRU.
Speaking during a visit to Australia Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock confirmed the 2023 attacks could be attributed to Russian intelligence and warned that Russia will face consequences.
While Baerbock offered no specifics regarding the consequences, German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christian Wagner told reporters in Berlin that Germany will “use the entire spectrum of measures” to respond to Russia’s attacks, including diplomatic actions and sanctions.
Last month, Germany’s cybersecurity agency, working with researchers from Google’s parent company, Alphabet, determined a similar Russian-controlled group called APT29 had been caught targeting several German political parties, aiming to burrow into their networks and steal data.
NATO and the EU issued separate statements Thursday and Friday expressing concern and condemning Russia’s malicious cyber campaign not only against Germany, but Britain, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden.
Through State Department spokesperson Andrew Miller, the United States issued a statement as well Friday, condemning the cyberattacks and joining Germany in attributing them to the Russian-controlled APT28 espionage group.
The NATO statement said the attacks included cyber and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns, and other hybrid operations. The EU statement said the cyber campaign targeted “democratic institutions, government entities, and critical infrastructure providers across the European Union and beyond.”
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
