Bild claims [paywall and in German] that Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal computer was one of the first to be compromised in a cyberattack linked to Russia. Merkel's computer was reportedly used to spread malware to other targets within the German government.
Germany's top prosecutor has dropped an investigation into the National Security Agency's surveillance of Chancellor Merkel's cell phone.
V3.co.uk is claiming that German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen is under attack by hackers, but this has yet to be corroborated in any source the author can find.
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Amongst other news outlets, CIO reports on a hacker attack on the German parliament (Bundestag) that occured four weeks ago and is still ongoing:
Trojans introduced to the Bundestag network are still working and are still sending data from the internal network to an unknown destination, several anonymous parliament sources told German publication Der Spiegel.[German]
All software and hardware in the German parliamentary network might need to be replaced[1]. More than four weeks after a cyberattack, the government hasn't managed to erase spyware from the system, according to a news report.
Some MPs have concerns to call experts from the foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, for help, because the agency would gain access to the legislative process, a possible violation of the principles of Separation of Powers.
[1] Apparently about 20.000 machines are affected
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gravis on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:58PM
i wonder if this means they will start switching desktops that politicians use over to something more secure. though i could see them getting hacked if they use SystemD(eutschland).
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:10PM
Their best defense has always been a good offense. #RussianTour2016
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:27PM
when it comes to computers, the best defense is turning it off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:21PM
... and thus, we enter a new age... the age in which we start fragmenting the internet down to something we can control, something we can grasp & comprehend. Finally we have understood that while we used the Internet for Good first, it can also be used by Dark Powers. And now we wish to harness these Dark Powers, so we can unleash them on our enemies (of the day)...
eehhhhhh, I guess I won't quit my day job to be a writer then
(Score: 2) by ThG on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:54PM
Bild? Really? I can't think of a less credible source for *anything*.
That newspaper is mass propaganda for the stupid. Not more.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 16 2015, @06:12PM
So what good German media is there?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:40PM
Der Postillion. http://www.der-postillon.com/ [der-postillon.com]
Sort of a German "Onion", but even they can't make the things up that happen.
In sincerity, German media is mostly divided between the conglomerates Springer (who own Bild), Burda and Dumont on the print side and the half-state broadcasters, Pro7Sat1 and RTL on the AV side. To phrase it nicely, all these are said by some people to recently be a bit lacking. There are a few smaller publishers, of which "FAZ" is the most reputable, but since the death of their editor Frank Schirrmacher, it's been straight downhill with them, following the decline of weekly newsmag "Der Spiegel".
Felix ("Fefe") von Leitner (known as author/maintainer of dietlibc) runs a blog that aggregates news that could be filed under "hopeless, but not serious". It's mostly read by intellectuals from the IT sector who long for their daily dose of facepalms.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:30PM
Bugtraq may also be a facepalm event.. ;)
I still remember the missile that got activated but wouldn't be released because the loop in the control program had an extra semicolon.. ie "for(..); countdown();".. ;-)
Any tip on other security lists?
I guess Felix is German language only?
(Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:47PM
The main Fefe blog (http://blog.fefe.de/ [blog.fefe.de]) is German-only, but roughly half of the newsbits he links to are in English.
Topic-wise, he's not just about IT and IT security, but about the usual national and international news too. He posts whenever incompetence leads to embarrassment or new, unimaginable levels of hopelessness are reached somewhere.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:19PM
So what good German media is there?
There is none. The publishing house Heise [heise.de] is more or less ok, though.
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 16 2015, @06:16PM
According to this source (German language) [t-online.de] the trojan found on Merkel's computer is not the one which infected the parliament's network, but another, widespread trojan which tries to compromise online banking.
Also, the "evidence" cited by Bild is a mail that pretends to come from Angela Merkel which contains a malware link. I guess someone doesn't know how easily you can fake the sender of an email without needing control of their computer.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.