A Major Hacking Spree Gets Personal for German Politicians
In an extensive series of tweets throughout December, hackers leaked sensitive data from hundreds of German politicians, including members of the European parliament, German parliament, and regional state parliaments. The move reflects an insidious strategy criminals and hacktivists sometimes use to expose and endanger targets by leaking deeply person details about them and their families.
The leaks also impacted Chancellor Angela Merkel to a degree, as well as some journalists and performers. Though hackers posted the stolen information to a Twitter account over many days as a sort of digital advent calendar, the tweets gained attention on Thursday, and Germany's Federal Office for Information Security scrambled to react on Friday as Twitter removed the account.
The trove of leaked documents is massive, but early assessments indicate that it seems focused less on exposing state secrets than it does on revealing deeply personal information about its targets. The exposed data includes internal political communications, like emails and scans of faxes, along with credit card information, home addresses, phone numbers, personal identification card details, private chat logs, and even voicemails from relatives and children.
