Russia Exposes Many Cyberattacks Coming from Germany — Lavrov

Russia exposed many cyberattacks against Russian facilities and organizations coming from Germany last year and this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his German counterpart Heiko Maas on Tuesday.

“We have expressed our concern to the German side over the situation in our cybersecurity cooperation. We said that last year and this year we exposed many cyberattacks against facilities and organizations in Russia coming from the German segment of the Internet,” he said.

Lavrov said that Russia’s National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents in January 2019-May 2020 identified 75 cases in which Russian resources, including more than 50 government offices, came under hacker attacks from the German segment of the Internet.

“Notifications concerning all these 75 cases were dispatched to the German authorities concerned. Only in seven cases of the 75 formalistic replies were received. None of them contained any answers to the essence of the questions asked. In the meantime, those questions implied that each of the incidents should be scrutinized professionally, because we exposed hacker attacks, including ones against our government resources,” Lavrov said.

Germany is interested in resuming consultations on issues of information security, the Russian foreign minister commented after talks with his German counterpart.

“In 2018, I would like to recall, we had a mechanism of consultations on cybersecurity which was scaled down by the German side two years ago. Today, thank God, we heard interest in resuming such dialogue in this or that format,” he said.

According to the Russian top diplomat, Russia is ready to discuss possible resumption of cybersecurity consultations with the German side. “The more so since we want to hear what our German colleagues can say in response to the 75 offers we have sent to Germany in the recent 18 months concerning hacker attacks on Russian institutions, including government agencies, from the German sector of the Internet,” he noted.

Sergey Lavrov also expressed satisfaction that Moscow and Berlin were finally beginning to understand that it was necessary to have proper professional channels to maintain conversation not in the context of any domestic political interests, not in the context of any electoral considerations, but just because the sides are “partners and good friends.”

“Russia doesn’t want cooperation with Germany to be marred and is ready to prevent any such attempts,” Lavrov stressed.