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Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was targeted by a large-scale cyberattack on Saturday that forced the opposition party to temporarily take parts of its IT infrastructure off line.
Law enforcement said they were investigating the attack and working to prevent further damage, without specifying its scale or suspected perpetrators. “The manner in which the attack was carried out points to a very professional actor,” a spokesperson told Reuters.
The German Interior Ministry said it would warn “all parties in the German Bundestag” about the attack. “Authorities have ramped up all protective measures against digital and hybrid threats,” it said.
Politically motivated cyberattacks have increased ahead of this month’s EU election, with many linked to Russian state-sponsored actors. Juhan Lepassaar, head of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), last week told media that overall attempted attacks doubled from the last quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of this year.
“This is part of the Russian war of aggression, which they fight physically in Ukraine but digitally also across Europe,” he said.
Earlier this month, the German government accused Moscow of a series of cyberstrikes on lawmakers from the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) in 2023, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“We can attribute this cyberattack to a group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told a news conference.
