German parliament speaker targeted in phishing attack: report

BERLIN: Germany’s parliamentary speaker has become the latest victim in a wave of phishing attacks targeting users of the Signal messaging app, which intelligence services have blamed on Russia, a report said Wednesday.
Julia Kloeckner, a senior politician from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU party, saw her Signal account compromised by hackers, reported Der Spiegel news outlet, citing unidentified sources.
A spokesman for Kloeckner would neither confirm nor deny the report when contacted by AFP, saying only that parliament “generally does not provide information on security-critical infrastructure.”
Kloeckner is a member of the CDU’s executive committee, whose members — including Merz — communicate via a Signal chat group, Der Spiegel said.
The domestic intelligence service, the BfV, has briefed Merz on the matter and an examination of his phone did not find any irregularities, it said.
Just this week, the spy agency issued a warning about the ongoing wave of phishing attacks to lawmakers.
“It must be assumed that a large number of Signal groups in the parliamentary sphere are currently being read by the attackers almost without being noticed,” the agency said, according to Spiegel.
Berlin, Kyiv’s biggest provider of military aid, has faced a flood of cyberattacks, as well as espionage and sabotage plots, allegedly directed from Moscow since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

German parliament speaker targeted in phishing attack: report