Germany has made it official that Russia’s cyber army ‘APT28’-well known as Russian hacking group “Fancy Bear” launched two cyber attacks in 2016 for bringing in a kind of political instability in the region.
Arne Schoenbohm, the President for the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) of Germany added in the announcement that the attack was similar to the one launched on US Hillary Clinton’s US Election Campaign in 2015 which made her loose the US polls of 2016.
Fancy Bear tried to create an internet domain for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union Party in the region of Baltic and wanted to influence the public image of the de facto leader of the European Union to a large extent. The cyber attack was launched in May 2016, but couldn’t succeed as the administrative staff of Ms Merkel who supported US invasion on Iraq was smart enough to thwart it from the bud.
Russian cyber army then launched a second attack, several months later, by directing a spear phishing scheme against German parties in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. The attack was launched in the form of a NATO domain name used to inject malicious software into the networks of politicians.
US Agencies like CIA and FBI have already warned Germany against possible cyber attacks from Russia. As Merkel is seeking a fourth term lead, Vladimir Putin will definitely try to influence the elections for obvious reasons.
Mr. Schoenbohm said that his agency was doing its best to strengthen Germany’s defenses against such attacks by monitoring government networks and educating politicians and parties on how to protect the government network.
NOTE- Russia’s Apt28 or Fancy bear has already stolen 16 gigabytes of data from the Germany Parliament in 2016. In December, the said cyber army has managed to secure some critical info from Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
