German defence ministry ‘hacked by Russia’

Germany has admitted that its foreign and defence ministries fell victim to a cybersecurity breach, reportedly carried out by Russian hacking group APT28, also known as Fancy Bear.

Two years ago, security analyst Dmitri Alperovitch of Crowdstrike told the Christian Science Monitor he had “high level confidence” that Fancy Bear was a Russian state intelligence agency. The same group is accused of hacking email accounts belonging to the Clinton campaign during the 2016 US presidential election.

According to media reports, the German breach could have occurred up to a year ago, when the group placed a piece of malware on a secure network called Informationsverbund Berlin-Bonn (IVBB).

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The IVBB is a communications system that operates independently of other public networks, “for supposed added security”, Deutches Welle says.

A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry told Reuters the attack has been “isolated and brought under control”, and that authorities are working on addressing the incident “with high priority and significant resources.”

Authorities have given no indication of how much data had been intercepted or stolen, and declined to comment on the contents of any data that may have been compromised.

Business Insider says the German government receives “around 20 attempted hacks per day”, and intelligence services perform network penetration testing once a week.