Germany Says Government Network Was Breached (bbc.com) 30
An anonymous reader shares a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): German authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating a security breach of the government's highly protected computer network. The country's intelligence agencies were examining attacks on more than one government ministry, the interior ministry said, adding that the affected departments had been informed and that the attack had been isolated and brought under control. Earlier on Wednesday, the German news agency DPA reported that German security services had discovered a breach of the government's IT network in December and traced it back to state-sponsored Russian hackers. German companies have been the target of sustained attacks by state-sponsored hackers, mainly believed to be Chinese. In 2015, the Bundestag, parliament's lower house, suffered a extensive breach, leading to the theft of several gigabytes of data by what German security officials believe were Russian cyberthieves. Hackers believed to be part of the Russia-linked APT28 group sought to infiltrate the computer systems of several German political parties in 2016, Germany's domestic intelligence agency said in 2016.
Right wingers go "No, Russia is cool man!" (Score:1)
Must have been Hillary Clinton. Russia is awesome since they helped us win the election!
Erm.. I mean, since they didn't help us win the election! That's just crazy talk! Russia would never do anything like that! They're cool, man! Don't be a narc!
Re: (Score:2)
Russia is the least of your worries
Putin is a KGB-cancer snake in the grass. He seeks nothing less than the restoration and subsequent expansion of the USSR. And he is playing the long game. People also underestimated Hitler as 'that Mickey Mouse from Austria with a funny moustache'. That didn't turn out very well, either.
Re: Of course (Score:2)
This only applies to the ministry of foreign affairs. The defence/military ministry was using the good stuff from the US all day long. However, defence is not the core competence of they ministry. Instead they mastered mismanagement and incompetence, e.g., broken submarines, marine helicopters that do rust over the ocean, illegal drones, guns that do not work in hot conditions etc.
The German experts found (Score:3)
An ip range that can only be Russian?
Was it a work day and within working hours in Russia?
So what do the Germans do after their cyber failure and having "suffered a extensive breach"?
Call in experts to do secret cyber things and never tell Russia that it did an "extensive breach"?
Tell the media in 30-50 years how cyber experts countered Russia?
Go running to the media in real time to tell of the "extensive breach" with no regard for German cyber security?
Reading about "security" issues in real time is not allowed if anything was really security related.
Re: The German experts found (Score:3)
The attack happened in December not yesterday. We live in a democracy (most of the time) therefore they have to inform the public. The parliament and the press are pissed because they have not been informed sooner. Also the Russians, if they were the criminals, know want they took.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, why trust security "experts" when some knob on /. who never provides a shed of evidence for any of the crap they spout can just make things up?
Hows that rural broadband coming?
Re: (Score:3)
Go running to the media in real time to tell of the "extensive breach" with no regard for German cyber security?
Running to the media and claiming a threat from a foreign country diverts attention from internal political problems back home.
Like the Diesel scandal.
The government networking folks can now run to parliament and demand a massive budget increase to deal with this Russian Hacker Mine Shaft Gap.
Standard political maneuvering.
Yet more Russian bogeyman waffle (Score:3)
New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies [theguardian.com]
NSA tapped German Chancellery for decades, WikiLeaks claims [theguardian.com]
Russia together with the ISIS? (Score:2)