Germany Issues Arrest Warrant For Russian Hacker Of Bundestag

Tom Jowitt,
Germany, Brandenburg Gate © S.Borisov Shutterstock 2012

GRU Officer Dmitry Badin, who is also wanted in the US for hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails, is now wanted by Germany for Bundestag cyberattack in 2015

German prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for a Russian citizen Dmitry Badin, who is reportedly an officer in a hacking unit of that country’s GRU military intelligence.

Dmitry Badin is said to be a member of the GRU hacking unit 26165, which is better known among cyber security analysts as APT28.

APT28 goes by other names as well including ‘Fancy Bear’ or ‘Strontium’, and has carried many cyber-attacks over the years. In January 2017 for example APT28 attacked a number of political targets, including the US Senate and organisations linked to the Olympic Games.

Arrest warrant

Badin meanwhile is wanted for the April/May 2015 cyberattack against Germany’s parliament (Bundestag) that impacted 20,000 computers used by politicians, support staff and civil servants on the Parlakom network, including Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own computer.

At the time it was the largest cyber-attack on the Bundestag, and the attack dragged on for at least a month.

In June that year Germany’s defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, warned of the growing danger posed by cyber-attacks as the German government conducted a review of its information security measures.

At the same time five years ago, Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, told a press conference that a foreign intelligence service of Russia was possibly behind the Bundestag hack.

GRU hacker

And now it is being reported in the German media that Germany’s Federal Prosecutor General (Generalbundesanwalt) issued an arrest warrant for the GRU officer involved in the 2015 hack.

Dmitry Badin is said to be the same Russian operative who in 2016 successfully derailed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by hacking into her emails, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.

The German newspaper did not reveal its source, but reported that 28 year old Badin is also wanted by US officials for the hack of Clinton and the Democratic Party’s email servers.

In 2016 US intelligence officials officially blamed “senior” Russian government figures for recent politically motivated hacking incidents, including the release of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

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