Germany announced on Friday that it had identified two Russian cyber operations affecting air traffic control and February’s general election, and that it had summoned the Russian ambassador.
A foreign ministry spokesperson said: “We can now clearly attribute the cyberattack against German Air Safety in August 2024 to the hacker collective APT28, also known as Fancy Bear.”
“Second, we can now state definitively that Russia, through the Storm 1516 campaign, sought to influence and destabilise the most recent federal election,” he added.
German authorities emphasized that a series of countermeasures would be implemented in coordination with European partners. The spokesperson also noted that Berlin would support potential “new individual sanctions against hybrid actors on a European level” although specific details were not provided.
European governments remain on high alert regarding cybersecurity threats, including espionage, drone surveillance, sabotage, and disinformation campaigns. Germany has previously accused Moscow of “hybrid attacks”, including drone flights near various European airports in recent months.
