Germany May Go Offensive After Russian Cyber Attacks
The head of the German equivalent of the FBI said he'd like the legal authority to "wipe out" servers the Russian government allegedly used to deploy cyber-attacks again Germany.
"We believe it is necessary that we are in a position to be able to wipe out these servers if the providers and the owners of the servers are not ready to ensure that they are not used to carry out attacks," Hans-Georg Maassen, Head of Germany's BfV internal security agency (pictured) said recently at a cyber conference in Potsdam, Germany. He was talking about the Kremlin.
Russian hackers grabbed a big chunk of data on the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, in an attack that happened two years ago this month. They've also gone after the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and individual politicians in the lead up to the nation's September elections, though it's not known whether those attacks were successful.
The accusations are familiar. The United States government has been adamant that Russia hacked Democratic party officials in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. The information found in the hacks was released throughout election season, in what appeared to be attempts to damage Hillary Clinton's candidacy in favor of Donald Trump.
The French government, too, has accused the Kremlin of spreading misinformation in favor of its preferred French presidential candidate, the far-right Marine Le Pen.
Germany's national elections are up in September, and Maassen said he's not sure whether the Kremlin will use the information he says they stole.
The German government is reportedly looking into reworking a few laws to allow German cyber squads to find the stolen information and eradicate it.
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