Russia has complained about a large number of hacker attacks from Germany on its state institutions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today at a meeting with his German colleague Heiko Maas in Moscow that there had been 75 such attacks between January last year and May this year.
More than 50 Russian state institutions were affected. The responsible German authorities were informed of all attacks, Lavrov said. „We only received a very formal response in seven cases.“ Lavrov was responding to German allegations that Russia was not participating in the investigation of a Russian hacker attack on the German Bundestag in 2015.
International arrest warrant
The cyber attack causes annoyance in Berlin. Computers in numerous parliamentary offices were infected with spy software, including computers in the Bundestag office of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe obtained an international arrest warrant for a young Russian hacker. He is accused of being a secret service agent and spying on data. Russia rejects that.
The German authorities were asked specific questions about the attacks in Russia that went unanswered, Lavrov said. The Russian authorities needed the answers to professionally investigate the attacks. The minister said that ignoring such inquiries contradicts the political level of Germany’s own wishes.
