Hundreds of German public figures and politicians had their personal data and documents stolen by hackers. The cyber defense office had known about isolated cases for weeks, but said it only connected the dots on Friday.
Germany’s Federal Office for IT Safety (BSI) said on Saturday that it had only become aware of a massive data breach affecting hundreds of lawmakers on Friday, several weeks after a lawmaker had told BSI officials about suspicious activity on their personal accounts.
“Everybody assumed it was an isolated case,” BSI said. “Only by becoming aware of the release of the data sets via the Twitter Account ‘G0d’ on January 3, 2019, could the BSI in a further analysis on January 4, 2019 connect this case and four other cases that the BSI became aware of during 2018,” it added.