German politicians hit by hackers in large-scale data dump
The ‘elaborately done social-engineering attack’ happened via Twitter over the past two weeks
Berlin/Seeon — Hackers have released personal data linked to hundreds of politicians in Germany in the biggest data dump of its kind in the country. However, a government spokesperson said on Friday that no sensitive information from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office was among the data published online. "With regard to the chancellery, it seems that, judging by the initial review, no sensitive information and data have been published and this includes [from] the chancellor,” the spokesperson told a regular government news conference. The information includes e-mail addresses, cellphone numbers, photos of IDs and personal chat transcripts, according to an initial review on Friday. The data was leaked over the past weeks via a Twitter account called “G0d” that identifies itself as based in Hamburg and describes itself using the words “security researching”, “artist” and “satire & irony”. It looks like the hackers got the passwords to Facebook accounts and Twitter profiles and worked t...
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