Cyberattack on CDU – Office for the Protection of the Constitution called in
After the SPD, the CDU has now also been digitally attacked. The authorities are taking the incident "very seriously". Everything points to a professional actor
The CDU's digital infrastructure was attacked remotely - presumably by a professional actor.
(Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com)
One week before the European elections, the CDU has fallen victim to a cyberattack. Government circles said on Saturday that the incident was being taken very seriously. The Ministry of the Interior confirmed a serious cyberattack on the party's network. Nothing could be said about the extent of the damage or the attacker, due to the ongoing investigation. "However, the nature of the attack points to a very professional actor," explained a spokesperson. Whether sensitive data was affected remained unclear at first. A CDU spokesperson said: "As a precautionary measure, parts of the IT infrastructure were taken offline and isolated."
The cdu.de website was initially still accessible. The "Neue Westfälische" also reported on the incident, citing General Secretary Carsten Linnemann. It was reported from government circles that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) had already spoken to party leader Friedrich Merz. The CDU stated that 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.
Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns parties
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will issue a warning to all parties in the German Bundestag on Saturday, explained the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior. "Our security authorities have ramped up all protective measures against digital and hybrid threats and are raising awareness of the dangers. We are once again seeing how necessary this is, especially before elections." The SPD was also the victim of a cyberattack last year. At that time, email accounts at the party headquarters were hacked. The German government blamed a unit of the Russian military intelligence service for the attack.
As a result, the Federal Foreign Office summoned a high-ranking Russian diplomat at the beginning of May and called the German ambassador in Moscow, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, back to Berlin for a week of consultations. In addition to the SPD, German companies from the logistics, armaments, aerospace and IT services sectors were also victims of this attack. According to the SPD, it was made possible by a security vulnerability at Microsoft that was still unknown at the time.
(nie)
