Conflicting accounts given as hundreds of politicians have data compromised
Germany’s Interior minister Horst Seehofer is under pressure to provide answers over his handling of a data leak involving hundreds of politicians.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partner said he’d provide a statement by Wednesday at the latest, after officials gave apparently conflicting accounts of how much they knew about the leak prior to last week’s revelations.
Germany’s cyber defence agency had initially said it knew about security breaches in December, before backtracking to say it had investigated isolated incidents without having been able to link them to the mass release of private data and chats that took place on Twitter.
Seefoher said he wanted to investigate the full facts of the case before making any further public announcements.
Security experts say the quantity of information released points to a sophisticated operation that would have been difficult to carry out by a lone hacker.
The government says it is now looking at whether new measures can be introduced to re-inforce security on web platforms.