Russia was behind a major cyberattack against the German aviation safety authority (DFS) in August 2024, a spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry announced at a press conference, according to the DPA news agency.
He says it can be determined that the Russian hacker group APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, was behind the attack. The group is linked to Russia's military intelligence service GRU.
Suspicions against that particular group were already raised in connection with the attack. The perpetrators managed to gain access to the authority's IT system, but it was stated that it had no impact on air traffic at the time.
Election filth
Secondly, we can now definitively say that Russia, through the Storm 1516 campaign, attempted to influence and destabilize the recent federal election, the spokesperson said.
Storm 1516 has previously been identified as a central organ in an extensive Russian propaganda machine online that has spread lies and attempted to sow division in European countries and the United States.
The most recent elections to the German Bundestag were held in February this year. During the election campaign, Russia was accused of orchestrating smear campaigns against the Greens' top candidate Robert Habeck and the Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, who was elected Chancellor of Germany.
Security threats
Germany will take “a series of response measures” in consultation with other European countries to make Russia “pay a price for its hybrid actions.” This could include sanctions against individual “hybrid actors, at a European level,” according to the spokesperson.
At this point, the Russian ambassador, Sergei Netyayev, is summoned to the ministry.
Russia has threatened Germany's security in a very concrete way, the Foreign Ministry emphasizes at the press conference.
Not only through its war of aggression against Ukraine but also here in Germany, says the spokesperson, who was not named in the initial German media reports.
