BERLIN (Reuters) – A series of cyber attacks attributable to the Russian military intelligence service GRU targeted Germany’s governing Social Democrats as well as the country’s logistics, defence, aerospace and IT sectors, the interior ministry said on Friday.
APT 28 – the group that orchestrated the attacks in 2022 and reports to the GRU – exploited a then-unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook over a longer period of time in order to compromise email accounts, the ministry said.
“The Russian cyber attacks are a threat to our democracy, which we are resolutely countering,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement, adding that Germany was acting alongside the EU and NATO. “Under no circumstances will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the Russian regime.”
Faeser added that it was particularly critical to counter such attacks from Russia ahead of the European and other elections this year.
Earlier on Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned Russia that it would face consequences for the attacks, which saw a series of German websites knocked offline.
APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been active worldwide since at least 2004, primarily in the field of cyber espionage. According to Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, it is one of the most active and dangerous cyber actors worldwide.
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(Reporting by Alasdair Pal and Andreas Rinke, Writing by Friederike Heine, Editing by Rachel More)
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