student for stealing and publishing a massive trove of personal
data of hundreds of
politicians[1], journalists and other
public figures last month.
The young man, whose identity has not been revealed by the
police, was arrested after police raided his parent’s house in
west-central German State of Hesse on Sunday and recovered a
computer that the suspect tried to destroy 2 days before the search
and a data backup.
The suspect, who believed to have acted alone, has admitted of
carrying out the mass hacking of German politicians out of anger at
their political statements, BKA Federal Criminal Police
revealed.
“The accused was interrogated on 07.01.2019 by the senior
prosecutor and officials of the Federal Criminal Police Office. He
comprehensively acknowledged the allegations against him and
provided information on his own offenses,” the BKA said in a
press
release[2].
“Due to a lack of grounds for detention, the accused was released
in the evening hours of 07.01.2019 and the provisional arrest
canceled. The evidence seized as part of the search warrant, in
particular computers and data carriers, is currently being fully
evaluated.”
and leak personal data from about 1,000 people, including
Chancellor Merkel, journalists, and politicians from parties
currently represented in the federal parliament, including the CDU,
CSU, SPD, FDP, Left party (Die Linke) and Greens.
Known on Twitter by the name “G0d,” the suspect published private
data about German politicians, journalists, and celebrities on
Twitter, under the username @_0rbit.
Telephone numbers, private chats, and letters, some credit card
data, addresses and copies of identity cards of victims were all
exposed in what believed to be one of the country’s biggest data
breaches in the history.
Unlike as initially feared, early evidence suggests no
involvement of foreign intelligence or activists for far-right
Alternative for Germany (AfD), who was not targeted by the
attacker, in the incident.
Besides German politicians, the intrusive hack attacks also
affected well-known actor Til Schweiger, two renowned German
comedians, Jan Boehmermann and Christian Ehring, as well as dozens
of journalists from ZDF and ARD–public-funded German media
outlets.
Germany is still in the process of removing the exposed data
from the Internet, but there are no signs that any information was
released that would be considered politically explosive or increase
security risks.
References
- ^
data of hundreds of politicians
(thehackernews.com) - ^
press release
(www.bka.de)
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