German daily Bild reported on Wednesday that Germany has come under a large-scale attack by information technology from Russia. According to the MTI report, the The Federal Bureau of Information Security (BSI) confirmed the fact of the attack.
The latest cyber attack is also known as APT28 and Fancy Bear. Performed by a group of pirates, associated with the Russian Military Intelligence (GU). The objective of the operation was the so-called critical infrastructure and banking system.
Possible motive for retaliation against sanctions against Russia. It is also envisaged that the attack is aimed at preventing harsh sanctions against Belarus and its head of state Alexander Lukashenko, Bild wrote, noting that the planned sanctions against Belarus include the country’s exclusion from the international SWIFT system of interbank payments.
Bild noted that GU, through hacker groups under its control, has launched several large-scale cyber attacks against Germany in recent years. Hackers infiltrated many times
- In the IT system of the Federal Parliament (Bundestag), data on politicians were obtained;
- and data from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) stolen, which was provided by the German biotech company BioNTech that developed one of the first vaccines to protect against a new type of coronavirus disease (SARS-CoV-2) (Covid-19), to the agency as the European Union’s pharmacovigilance authority.
