Russian hackers are not slowing down in cyberattacks.
The alleged attack happened on the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Their email accounts were compromised in the attack.
This hack saga began over two years ago during the Russian-Ukraine war and it has gradually growed over the time.
How it Began
A group called APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, which is believed to have ties with the Russian Government, has been accused of doing many cyberattacks all over the world, including in Germany and a few Czech entities.
They found a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook and used it to get into the SPD’s emails.
The Vulnerability, a zero-day CVE-2023-23397, is a critical privilege escalation bug in Outlook that could allow attackers to access Net-NTLMv2 hashes and then use them to authenticate themselves using a relay attack.
The German government says that not only the SPD but also German companies in defense and aerospace.
It also included information technology targets, as well as things related to the war in Ukraine.
These cyberattacks started around March 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The German government alleged that Russia’s military intelligence service, GRU, was behind these attacks.
They even summoned a Russian diplomat in response to these accusations.
Russia Denied the Allegations
Russia has denied the allegations and termed the accusations as “unsubstantiated and groundless”.
The Putin-led government has denied similar cyber-incidences as state-sponsored acts in the past too.
The West has been rigid in its narrative of Russia’s involvement in cyber-attacks for decades now.
Not the First Rodeo
Recently, the Australian Foreign Minister joined other countries in saying that APT28, which is believed to be connected to Russia, was behind some cyberattacks.
This is not the first time Russian hackers have been accused of spying on Germany.
Back in 2020, Angela Merkel, who was the Chancellor of Germany at the time, accused Russia of spying on her.
One major incident blamed on Russian hackers was in 2015 when they attacked Germany’s parliament, causing it to shut down for days.
