Russian hackers attacked websites of German officials, ministries and politicians
Germany supplies Ukraine with self-propelled howitzers from maintenance
Ukraine will be equipped with a total of twelve state-of-the-art self-propelled howitzers to be able to counter Russian attackers. Seven of these come from Germany, as announced by the Defense Minister in Slovakia.
According to an internal report by officials, the pro-Russian activist group “Kilnet” has disrupted the websites of German officials and ministries with hacker attacks. Security officials evaluated the attacks as a retaliation for German weapons deliveries.
Regimetreue Russian hackers have cyber-attacked and temporarily paralyzed the websites of German security officials, ministries and politicians. out how Research by news magazine “Spiegel” shows that the federal police and several state police authorities were among those affected. According to an internal report by officials, the Bundestag, the federal defense ministry and the SPD website of Chancellor Olaf Scholz were also targets of the hacker campaign. Some websites were temporarily unavailable due to overload attacks.
Russian hackers loyal to the regime launched cyber attacks in retaliation for German weapons deliveries in Ukraine (symbol image)
Source: DPA/Nicholas Armor
According to the assessment of security officials, the so-called “Distributed Denial of Service” attacks (DDoS) are acts of retaliation for the delivery of German weapons to Ukraine. The pro-Russian activist group “Kilnet” is said to be responsible for these technically relatively simple attacks. He confessed to attacks on German websites in the Telegram messenger service.
The Central Office for Combating Internet Crime at the Attorney General’s Office in Frankfurt am Main has opened an investigation into the “Kilnet” attacks. The authority considers that the attack on the website of the Hessian State Police also belongs to the active group.
Ministries confirm disruptions
The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed to “Spiegel” that the state police website there had been attacked earlier in the week and the site was offline for a short time. The Federal Ministry of Defense also acknowledged that “our websites Bundeswehr.de and bmvg.de were briefly unavailable several times over the past few days”. The Bavarian Ministry of Internal Affairs also confirmed the attack on the website of the state police. However, the result was only loading for a long time.
A Bundestag spokesman spoke of a “failed attack attempt”. Federal police reported a “brief disruption without significant effects”. The SPD did not want to confirm or deny the attack on Olaf Scholz’s website.
In mid-April, “Kilnet” had already attacked the website of the German Reconstruction Loan Corporation (KfW), making it nearly impossible to access for several hours. The websites of airports in Hamburg and Bremen could not be accessed for some time in mid-April.
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