IANS | 03 May, 2024
Germany has summoned the Acting Charge d Affaires of the Russian
embassy in response to a Russian cyberattack on the governing Social
Democratic Party (SPD) last year.
He has been summoned for noon, a spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry announced in Berlin on Friday.
Earlier,
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin blames a unit of the
Russian military intelligence service GRU for a 2023 cyberattack on the
centre-left SPD, which is in coalition with the Greens and pro-business
Free Democrats (FDP).
"Russian state hackers attacked Germany in
cyberspace," Baerbock said in Adelaide during a visit to Australia,
adding there would be consequences.
In June 2023, the SPD said
that email accounts belonging to its executive had been the target of a
cyberattack earlier that year.
According to the SPD, this was made
possible by a security vulnerability in software, which was not known
at the time of the attack. "It cannot be ruled out that data was leaked
from individual email inboxes," an SPD statement said.