The authorities are taking the incident “very seriously”: After the SPD, the CDU was also attacked by hackers. The actions indicate a professional actor, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
One week before the European elections, the CDU has fallen victim to a cyber attack. The incident is being taken very seriously, government sources said on Saturday. The Interior Ministry confirmed a serious cyber attack on the party’s network. Nothing can be said about the extent of the damage or the attacker because of the ongoing investigations. “The nature of the attack, however, points to a very professional actor,” a spokesman explained.
It was initially unclear whether sensitive data was affected. A CDU spokeswoman said: “Parts of the IT infrastructure were taken offline and isolated as a precautionary measure.” The website cdu.de was initially still accessible. The “Neue Westfälische” also reported on the incident, citing Secretary General Carsten Linnemann.
Government sources said that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) had already spoken to party leader Friedrich Merz. The CDU said it was now working closely with German security authorities and other external security experts. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Office for Information Security had begun investigations.
Cyber attack on SPD by Russian military intelligence
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will issue a warning to all parties in the German Bundestag on Saturday, said the Interior Ministry spokesman. “Our security authorities have ramped up all protective measures against digital and hybrid threats and are raising awareness of the dangers. We are seeing once again how necessary this is, especially before elections.”
The SPD was also the victim of a cyber attack last year. At that time, email accounts at the party headquarters were hacked. The federal government blames a unit of the Russian military intelligence service for the attack. The Foreign Office therefore summoned a high-ranking Russian diplomat at the beginning of May and recalled the German ambassador in Moscow, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, to Berlin for a week for consultations.
In addition to the SPD, the attack also affected German companies from the logistics, armaments, aerospace and IT services sectors. According to the SPD, it was made possible by a then-unknown security vulnerability at the software company Microsoft.
Source: Stern
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