The private and sensitive information of countless German politicians and other known public figures has been leaked over the internet. This has been deemed as among the biggest hacks in the history that the country has ever faced.
There has been hack email account committed in which telephone numbers, holiday photos of prominent journalists, entertainers and yes even private emails were released over Twitter. A great amount of data is undramatic and mundane as per the initial reports released by the German press. But a journalist for Bild newspaper has tweeted that he’d found evidence of political scandals as well as nepotism.
An Attack to the Government and a Shame to the IT Security Department
Politicians from the major German political parties except from nationalists AFD or Alternative for Germany were victimized of the hacks. This undoubtedly puts the German security service to shame and serious embarrassment at the same time. It has emerged that the information has been released via series of installments on a day to day basis. However, authorities were become aware of this incident over the last 24-hours that it was released for public viewing.
As mentioned earlier, the data was released using a Twitter account with the handle of @_Orbit. And the account was registered to a user from Hamburg. Since then, the account was suspended and some have shared the files before it is taken down.
Assumptions that Lack of Evidence
This resulted to the immediate suspicion towards the Russian sponsored hackers. Domestic intelligence of Germany called the BfV has accused the hackers previously to be working for the Russian government and several state institutions. German Federal Office for IT Security released a statement that intensive examination and reviews are done with the cooperation of federal authorities to expedite the process and find and catch the culprit. According to German justice minister Katarina Barley:
“Those who are accountable for the act likes to damage confidence and integrity in institution and democracy.”
Yet, the exact details are yet to surface. However, there’ve been several contradicting reports as to whether it can really be damaging or what impact it could bring. Few of the notable names who were targeted by the hack are the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the one who took the worst hit is the Green Party’s leader Robert Habeck in which private family photos were released online including sensitive work emails.