“Today we can say unambiguously [that] we can attribute this cyberattack to a group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia,” she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide.
MULTIPLE EUROPEAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES ACCUSE RUSSIA OF PLOTTING SABOTAGE ACROSS THE CONTINENT
“In other words, it was a state-sponsored Russian cyberattack on Germany, and this is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences.”
APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been accused of dozens of cyberattacks around the world.
The attack on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD was made public last year and blamed on a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook.
Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior said German companies, including in the defence, aerospace and information technology sectors, as well as targets related to Russia’s war in Ukraine were also a focus of the attacks.
The hacking campaign began at least as early as March 2022, a month after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, with emails at the SPD’s headquarters accessed from December that year, the ministry said in a statement.
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German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the campaign was orchestrated by Russia’s military intelligence service GRU.
A German Federal Foreign Office spokesperson said on Friday that the acting charge d’affaires of the Russian embassy in Berlin has been summoned.
The cyberattack showed “that the Russian threat to security and peace in Europe is real and enormous”, the spokesperson said.
Russia has denied past allegations by Western governments of being behind cyberattacks.
On Friday, its embassy in Germany said it “categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident … as unsubstantiated and groundless”.
