Germany complains to Moscow over pre-election phishing attacks on politicians

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/germany-russia-cyber-attack/2021/09/06/7b9ca734-0f28-11ec-baca-86b144fc8a2d_story.html

by justin66 • 5 years ago

41 18 5 years ago

washingtonpost.com

huibv• 5 years ago

The German government called on Moscow on Monday to cease "illegal cyber activities" immediately

Why do they do this? I imagine Putin crying with laughter. It's just pathetic.

Ajay-p• 5 years ago

Germany is rather beholden to Russian natural gas. Except for diplomatic rumblings there's not a whole lot they can do without jeopardizing themselves.

baybal22• 5 years ago

Not Germany, but its politicians.

They themselves sabotaged North Sea gas projects, and drilling for gas elsewhere in Europe, as well as Qatari gas offers.

Remaining beholden to Russian natural gas takes a lot of effort on their side.

dragonelite• 5 years ago

Don't think the russian governments really care, they want to focus on the east like pretty much every power center. Except European leaders that are going herp derp and give that piece of the pie to the US, kind of like how AUS is doing economic suicide that last push needed to slash its neck is China stopping its Iron ore imports.

woodpanel2• 5 years ago

Given that Germany has long been comitted to become more dependend on Russian Gas (in order to keep the Energiewende from collapsing) one can question the sincerity of this, as Germany clearly doesn't aticipate to do anything about it.

Might this all be just some voter-priming? You know, just in case the results of the upcoming Bundestag election fail to deliver confidence to the electorate about their new government's authority for full-sweeping intrusive laws. Which are of course fully needed in order to prevent "Russian Disinformation"…

sebwi2• 5 years ago

The chosen dependency on Russian gas has less to do with the Energiewende than with geopolitics. There has actually been a reduction in Russian gas supplies since the end of the Cold War. Germany is dependent on gas imports from Russia but less so than many other East European countries. Not to say that there aren't worrying signals, though. Russia has delivered far less gas to Germany this year, while depleting the gas stocked in their gas storage facilities in Germany.

woodpanel2• 5 years ago

No. Russia has steadily been increasing its gas supplies to Germany, it's just that Germany b/c of the Energiewende (a.k.a. "the world's d*st energy policy" [1]) has been increasing its gas demand even more. Germany is gobbling up the largest share of the world's exported gas market (~>10%) [2].

"Russia has delivered far less gas to Germany this year"

Russia's share of Germany's gas imports just increased again to more than 55% this year [3] – and this is pre NordStream 2.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11... [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgas/Tabellen_und_Grafiken#I... [3] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/151871/umfrag...*

bsd44• 5 years ago

Haven't these Russian agents heard of VPN before? I mean all this time they keep hacking us either from their homes or from the KGB offices, they're so easily traced it's pathetic...

fendy3002• 5 years ago

Well, I guess it's about sending a message

boomboomsubban• 5 years ago

Why would hiding their ip matter? This article blames Russia without even that easily faked evidence.

sk2020• 5 years ago

Or they’re domestic actors using Russian networks or tools to make their activity appear to be of Russian origin.

dylan604• 5 years ago

The Russians (and other actors) must be pissing themselves laughing at how easily they can interfere with democracy by making a few strokes of the keyboard. No bullets fired, no fellow countryman's blood shed, nothing but the minor inconviencing of some electrons. Yet the West is damn near civil war based on some social media posts.

jfengel• 5 years ago

In America, we've been doing it to ourselves for decades. I would trace it to at least the mid-90s, following patterns set up in the 50s and 60s. It's the same thing we've always done, magnified first by mass media, then by social media.

I don't know why it seems to work so well in other places. Europe, presumably, has even older divisions to employ. They're hardly immune to the basic foibles of Americans.

Germany complains to Moscow over pre-election phishing attacks on politicians

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