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German politicians targeted in mass data attack
- throw2455 8y agoTop HN without comments? Such articles with accusations are targeted at easy to convince people. For instance, see "The main parliamentary groups including the ruling centre-right and centre-left parties, as well as The Greens, left-wing Die Linke and FDP. Only AfD appears to have escaped" "Ohh, then it is obviously AfD supporters (Russia!), how smart I am" Btw, I have no clue what is AfD (some right-wing party?).
- theodormarcu 8y agoOr, perhaps, this is part of the same string of efforts supported by countries like Russia to discredit traditional political forces in Europe and the US in order to seed internal conflict that only benefits actors who do not benefit from strong liberal democracies.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- paganel 8y ago> Or, perhaps, this is part of the same string of efforts supported by countries like Russia Slightly related, but this morning I was reading a news story on a local website (I live in Eastern Europe, in a country that is a EU and NATO member) about the whole US budget debacle in the House Representatives, and the first (and until now only) comment was mentioning Ocasio Cortez (D) in a derogatory manner, even though she had not been named in said article at all and people around this part of the world don't have the slightest clue of who she is. Sure enough, I soon found a recent article about Ocasio Cortez on the (in)famous sputniknews.com website where she was criticized for I don't know exactly what (I'm not going to link it here, don't want to give them the traffic) and then it all made sense, it looks like the Russian shill accounts have a new target now. In other words the hybrid and propaganda war is indeed real.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoLast I hears some "conservative" fuck tried to discredit her for dancing[1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/04/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-college-dance-video-discredit-backfires https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/04/alexandria-o...
- lnsru 8y agoAfD stands for “alternative für Deutschland” and is another right wing party screaming loud. Nobody takes them seriously.
- ipsi 8y agoWell, they received 12.5% of the vote for the 2017 German Federal Elections, and, consequently have 94 seats (12.8% of the total) in the Bundestag -- I feel like it would be quite hard to argue that "no one takes them seriously" when 1/8th of the population took them seriously enough to vote for them.
- ed_balls 8y agoHasn't almost 1/5 of German voters voted on them? It's quite far from "Nobody takes them seriously". UKIP wasn't taken seriously as well, but it caused the biggest political crisis in decades.
- rndgermandude 8y agoAfD got 12.6% of the votes in the last federal election, with a turn out of 76.2%, which translates to 9.6% or less than 1/10th of the German electorate voting for them.
- ben_w 8y agoBy curious conincidence, UKIP also got 12.6% of the UK vote in 2015, so the point still stands.
- rndgermandude 8y agoI wasn't commenting on "the point", just wanted to correct the guess/misremembered information that they got 1/5th of the votes. AfD actually did influence German politics and policy making a lot, and public debate even more so, in my humble opinion. From what I have seen, AfD is also a lot more "broadly extremist" than UKIP, but I am very probably pretty biased, being from Germany and having consumed far more German news than British.
- tnolet 8y agoAfd was not in parliament in 2017, the purported date of the hack. Could also be a reason.
- _fizz_buzz_ 8y agoWhere did you find that the date of the hack was in 2017. As far as I can tell it was until October 2018: "The leaked data, which was illegally collected until October 2018 and released December 2018, but just found now, is still publicly available." https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/1081091768798597120 https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/108109176879...
- justtopost 8y agoNo idea who did it, or why, but merkel is sure the only motive could be decreasing faith in an already maligned government. Sure. I do, however, wonder if the omission of far right figures is in an attempt at a false flag. It seems odd all these 'leaks' of mostly public info are all on the left, yet with nothing damning being released. Maybe merkel wants those internet spying laws too.
- Nasrudith 8y agoFunny how false flags are only used against the far right whenever an illegal action may be linked to their ideologies whereas an immigrant so much as possibly getting a parking ticket is the direct fault of the left.
- justtopost 8y agoI agree, its not a good situation on either side. I have zero stake in this, and lean left. Edit: looks like the far right party not represented here was not in office at the time of the hack. I suppose we were both prematurely political.
- Nasrudith 8y agoWhile the hackers are clearly malevolent in their intentions I can't help but think of the one only surefire way to prevent this sort of meddling is radical transparency requirements among political canidates. They will wield immense power so asking them to be openly monitored would be justifiable at levels above even the judicial system so long as it was applied uniformly. It would indeed be awkward and something politicians everywhere would be reluctant to implement but it would work and respect human rights which is more than can be said about many measures in intelligence.
- mc32 8y agoThat’s not the answer either. You’ll not get the most able or most willing politicians but only the cleanest or anodyne candidates who may not be the ablest candidates. It’s a terrible filter.
- perfmode 8y agoWe already don’t get the most able politicians. We get corrupt and self-interested ones en masse. This argument is strong in theory, but not so much in practice.
- geofft 8y agoBut we're making steps towards not doing so. Why give up? This is like arguing for monarchy because democracy is a huge amount of time/effort and is imperfect anyway so why not save time. I've heard many bad arguments for monarchism as it happens, but none are quite so bad as "Why bother even trying to have good government?"
- perfmode 8y agoAccountability is precisely how we are making progress.
- newsgremlin 8y agoIn the UK there are people who would seriously argue for just that, because the image of the monarchy is one of prestige, superiority and good public relation. In other words good PR that politicians dream of, having a (apparently) off hands approach to politics also helps. I believe that shows the popularity and image contest of democratic politics.
- shawn5 8y agoAnyone up for a game of chess? https://www.laarc.io/l/chess https://www.laarc.io/l/chess
- tnolet 8y agoMy SO is a journalist in Germany. She's all over this. Not clear if there are any clear "scandals". Would be fantasticly German if absolutely nothing fishy shows up.
- wreath 8y agoWhy would it be "fantastically German"?
- smcl 8y agoIt'd play to the stereotypes of Germans being boring and efficient?
- StavrosK 8y ago"Of course we didn't do anything untoward, being corrupt would be a bad use of resources!"
- justaguyhere 8y agobeing corrupt would be a bad use of resources How badly I wish this was true in other parts of the world!
- y4mi 8y agoIt's not true in Germany either though...
- kaybe 8y agoI think it's funny that if you used to go to these countries for your job, and if you used bribery money, you could deduct it as business expenses. The law was changed in 2002, where it was still legal in non-German context and not concerning foreign public officers. Now that is illegal too. That doesn't mean there is non though, I wish it was true in Germany as well.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y agoI don't know if this is the doing of the Russian government, but it certainly sounds like the kind of thing they'd do.
- realradicalwash 8y agoall political parties are affected, except the AfD. some context: the AFD is more anti-immigration, pro-Russia, and anti-EU than any other party in parliament. so there are two explanations: 1) the AfD is not affected, because they just entered federal parliament a year ago and the hack happened before then. 2) whoever did this has no interest in harming the AfD.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoThis feels more like the work of a hacker activist group with the intent to show politicians how exposed everybody is. Especially in light of frequent naive statements about the internet and digitalisation (eg. recent interview with Dorothea Bär).
- kerng 8y agoThere arent any details yet about how it was done. Were the computers of the individuals targeted directly via spearphishing, or was it done by compromising iCloud,etc. directly or (id say most likely) password bruteforce account and no 2FA. If anyone finds an article with more details, please share.
- pgeorgi 8y agohttps://www.tagesschau.de/newsticker/liveblog-hack-politiker-101.html#Betroffener-Hacker-nutzten-schwaches-E-Mail-Passwort https://www.tagesschau.de/newsticker/liveblog-hack-politiker... explains one case: poor email password plus password recovery across different services. 2FA would likely have protected that person.
- interfixus 8y ago> A cyber analyst told the BBC there was speculation that hackers may have exploited weaknesses in email software to get hold of passwords that those targeted had also used on social media accounts If so (as probable, according to Occam), just the usual incompetence, irresponsibility, and self-inflicted damage. If you keep confidential data under no better protection than a Mickey Mouse password, ought you not be held accountable when it is - inevitably - leaked?
- cntlzw 8y agoLooks more like someone gathered sensitive data from several breaches instead of a single "hack".
- rndgermandude 8y agoThere is data dumped from social media accounts, data that was clearly dumped from icloud accounts, etc.
- Iwan-Zotow 8y agoRussians did it!
- creaghpatr 8y agoThis is an unquestionable fact!
- tempodox 8y agoNice. Now, please do the same to the Aussies, Brits, and U.S.-ians.
- adimitrov 8y agoSo far, it seems that the data dumped is purely "personal effects." E.g. pictures of children, phone numbers, private chats with family. Democracy and public policy do NOT benefit from this kind of "transparency." This is the "ad hominem" of hacks: vacuous, mean-spirited and — hopefully — entirely ineffectual.
- chopin 8y agoIt's exactly the kind of data our politicians deemed fair game for mass surveillance (eg. BND at DE-CIX). I have little sympathy. I also disagree that there is no potential benefit. Maybe it reminds those in power that any data retained may come back to haunt you. And it might dampen attempts to weaken encryption. Even legislation which explicitly exempts politicians from mass surveillance would probably make the public more aware of the problem.
- adimitrov 8y agoYou do have a point that this kind of data is, in fact, collected by mass government surveillance. I don't think the reverse holds, though. Politicians will not end up understanding private people's concerns over surveillance, because to them it's something else entirely. One is a frivolous attack on the individual, the other is a more abstract policy goal for the Good Cause™. I'm not saying this line of thought is legitimate, but instead that I have the strong suspicion this will not be interpreted as a message for "Datensparsamkeit" by the powers that be. I'm also wary of the argument that they "deserve" it. A lot of people who have nothing to do with said decisions were targeted, and maybe even some who opposed surveillance. The notion that "politicians" "deserve" to have their private data exposed by virtue of being politicians is Sippenhaft — collective punishment.
- 8y ago
- nabla9 8y agoA clue: >Only AfD appears to have escaped AfD is a right-wing political party in Germany. Their focus is migration, Islam and strengthening ties to Russia.
- jstanley 8y agoHow interesting! I wrote an encrypted pastebin that uses IPFS: https://hardbin.com/ https://hardbin.com/ I run a public gateway for it on the hardbin.com domain to make it easy for beginners to use without running their own IPFS node. Earlier today I got my first ever takedown request for a hardbin paste! CERT-Bund ("the national cyber security authority in Germany") gave me a link to a paste with encryption key and asked me to take it down. I have blocked the link in my nginx config, but I don't know whether that was the right thing to do or not. I'm interested in hearing opinions either way. Obviously it can still be accessed through other IPFS nodes. The paste contained a bunch of German political party names, alongside links to RAR files, which I presume contained this leaked data.
- LinuxBender 8y agoIn my humble opinion, you did the right thing. Whether or not providing access to the dump is legal or ethical, you would certainly receive substantial legal attention should you not comply. It is on the leaker to find methods to share files that can not be easily traced to a public server or a named owner. This is no different than if someone running one of the many reverse tor proxies (public to hidden network) were told to block access to something. They risk losing their server, domain, accounts and much worse. When dealing with embarrassment of government officials, laws get a little muddy and some people will look the other way.
- gammateam 8y agoBut did that government agency do the right thing? It seems more like a waste of public resources to take down links to encrypted files on a distributed file system? The nodes dont even know what theyre hosting and the cataloger to the pointers has pure discretion
- LinuxBender 8y agoThey have to make a best effort to protect their people, as futile as it may seem. If the archive really contained home addresses, their family members lives may be at risk.
- Quanttek 8y agoThe hack is clearly politically motivated, targeting all but the far-right parties (i.e. AfD is conspicuously missing) and left-leaning public figures. The data is often highly personal, including iCloud dumps, private photos, emails, and messages.
- chopin 8y agoYou mean such data as is collected by the BND at DE-CIX? I have only little sympathy.
- manfredo 8y agoThe absence of content on the AfD could also be due to the relatively young age of the party. It has only existed for 5 years which is extremely young for politics. Even if the leak contains recent data, there has been considerably less time to compromise party members. Being a young party could also mean the party's computer infrastructure and practices are more up to date.
- sschueller 8y agoOr the AfD is so technically inebt that it only has one party member that even has email...
- blattimwind 8y agoAfD members are very active on Facebook and various other networks.
- sorokod 8y agoAlso possible that this is a divide and conquer strategy by an external actor.
- gammateam 8y agoThats not conspicious given how old the info in this leak is
- cat199 8y ago"Contacts, private chats and financial details were put out on Twitter that belong to figures from every political party except the far-right AfD." ... "However, the fact that no right-wing politicians were targeted while prominent figures who had criticised them had been, suggested domestic right-wingers may also have been responsible, he told the BBC." hmm. editor?
- kristofferR 8y agoWhat an amazingly annoying hack to browse, you need to spend hours to just compile the whole thing. It's not really that complicated to just create a magnet of a folder and then spend time spreading the magnet link.