Members of Germany’s Left Party in the Bundestag have been targeted in a major cyberattack that overwhelmed their parliamentary email inboxes. According to the party, each member received more than 20,000 messages, leaving the accounts unusable and significantly limiting the work of their offices.
The incident was described as a spam-bombing attack. The messages reportedly came from different senders, used varied subject lines and were written in multiple languages. New emails continued to arrive every minute and even every second, requiring staff to delete them continuously.
Ina Latendorf, the parliamentary managing director of the Left Party’s group, said the attack had severely restricted the ability of lawmakers’ offices to work. The party checked with other parliamentary groups, which indicated that none of their Bundestag members had been affected.
The broader Bundestag email system experienced only delays because its servers had sufficient capacity. The affected lawmakers have received instructions on filtering the large number of messages, and Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security has been notified.
It remains unclear who was behind the attack. The incident was also reportedly unrelated to a possible spyware attack against the iPhones of government members and lawmakers, which Apple had previously warned about.
Sources: Tagesschau.