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BERLIN, Germany – In what was dubbed as a ‘serious attack’ on the German political establishment, scores of lawmakers in the country were targeted in a massive and sweeping data breach.

Personal details, including cell phone numbers and credit card data of members of all German political parties except those belonging to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) were leaked online.

The hacking came to light on Friday, after Twitter shut down an account that had been posting links to the sites hosting the data dump.

Twitter revealed that it had shut down an account named GOd, that had been posting links to these sites that expose the personal details of German lawmakers, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The data exposed included personal letter and emails, chats, copies of identity cards, credit cards, contact details and addresses of lawmakers from every major political party except AfD and also information of artists and journalists with leftist political leanings.

The attack was first reported by the German public broadcaster ARD TV on Friday, which said that the motive of the unidentified hacker remained unclear.

Unifying against ‘serious attack’

Following the expose on Friday, German officials initially said that they were not yet certain how the data had been stolen by cyber attackers.

They added that the Twitter account involved in the massive attack had been exposing the links with the material for weeks now.

Addressing a routine news conference, Government Spokesperson Martina Fietz told reporters, “Personal data and documents belonging to hundreds of politicians and public figures have been published online. MPs, Euro MPs and MPs from state parliaments were affected.”

Fietz also clarified, “With regard to the chancellery it seems that, judging by the initial review, no sensitive information and data have been published and this includes (from) the chancellor.”

However, as more details began to emerge, local reports revealed that the data breach had triggered an emergency meeting of Germany’s federal office for information security (BSI). 

BSI, which is the national cyber defence body, reportedly met to coordinate the response of federal government agencies, including the domestic and foreign intelligence agencies even as investigators uncovered more details.  

Later in the day, the German Justice Minister Katarina Barley acknowledged that the true extent of damage caused by the leak is not yet known.

Calling it a “serious attack,” Barley said, “The perpetrators want to erode trust in our democracy and in our institutions. Criminals and their backers must not be allowed to dictate debate in our nation.”

According to officials, the leaks included Merkel’s email address, along with several letters to and from the chancellor.

While AfD appeared to have escaped impact, lawmakers from the ruling centre-right and centre-left parties, The Greens, left-wing Die Linke and FDP were all targeted.

Party officials confirmed that the private family chats and credit card details of the Greens leader Robert Habeck had been posted online.

Reports pointed out that several other public figures, including journalists from public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, had their details leaked.

Details belonging to TV satirist Jan Bohmermann, rapper Marteria and rap group K.I.Z too were leaked.

About 3.4 gigabytes of data belonging to TV satirist, Christian Ehring too was posted online. 

Security questioned

Despite the leaks being posted last month, authorities only became aware of the theft on Thursday evening. 

Michael Gotschenberg, an RBB reporter who researched the attack, revealed that the Twitter account had posted the documents last month and boasted of 17,000 people before being suspended on Friday. 

He added that the account appeared to be operated from Hamburg.

Gotschenberg said that nothing politically explosive was known to have been leaked but the sheer volume of personal data involved suggested that the consequences could be considerable. 

This is not the first time German lawmakers have suffered a mass cyber attack.

In 2015, Germany’s main government network was breached by hackers and data was stolen from the computers in the Bundestag. 

At the time, experts raised fears of misuse of the data ahead of the 2017 election.  

Then, last year, the German foreign ministry’s computer network was breached in a powerful cyber attack.

Most of the previous attacks have been blamed on APT28, which is a Russian hacking group that is believed to have close ties to a Russian spy agency. 

The same group was blamed by some security experts for carrying out a cyber attack ahead of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

However, Russia has brushed off the accusations, calling them ‘a Russophobic witch-hunt.’

Meanwhile, following Friday’s expose, some experts have raised questions about the security situation, ahead of the European parliamentary elections scheduled to be held in May.