Right before the election: Putin's hackers are still active in the Bundestag - warnings issued to members of parliament

Hacker attacks from Russia also seem to continue around the general election.

And that could bring nasty surprises, especially after the election.

Berlin - The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns members of parliament against targeted phishing attacks around the federal election on September 26th.

The MPs' private telecom accounts are affected, according to a warning letter sent to the

.

According to experts, the hackers would primarily collect private information - in order to use it in coalition negotiations after the election.

It has long been known that hacker attacks from Russia are repeatedly targeting the Bundestag, and that hackers can sometimes stay on the Bundestag's servers for months.

Even before the federal election in 2021, hacker attacks from Russia were targeted - and so-called disinformation campaigns.

Are Putin's hackers planning to disrupt coalition negotiations after the general election?

"Russia is trying massively to capture passwords to resilient or diskreditierendes material may be obtained by employees in sensitive areas," said Patrick Sensburg (CDU), Chairman of the Verification Committee on

. With this one wants to collect “Kompromat”, so Sensburg. According to

, confidential information - for example negative statements about members of other parties - could be distributed in a targeted manner after the election in order to make coalition negotiations more difficult.

According to information from WDR and BR, the phishing campaigns against members of the Bundestag had picked up again at the end of August.

With deceptively real-looking emails - supposedly sent by email providers - one apparently got the passwords for the private email accounts.

Behind it is the so-called "ghostwriter" campaign, which is controlled by the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

Intelligence services warn of disruptions from Russia during the general election

"We are preparing for disruptive actions in total before, we are prepared in the IT security," said Federal Returning Officer Georg Thiel, also to

.

"But of course we also constantly follow fake news that are interspersed with regard to the election process and then react accordingly," said Thiel about another construction site of his office before the election.

Even at the beginning of the Bundestag election campaign, it had repeatedly become apparent that Russia was working against a candidate in particular: a government with Chancellor Annalena Baerbock (Greens) was probably the least desirable in Russian politics.

(kat)