The German Green party, which is part of the country’s governing coalition, confirmed that a cyberattack that hit its IT systems affected email accounts belonging to Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, who are government ministers.
The party’s co-leaders Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang also were among the victims of a hack in which some messages were forwarded to external servers, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Thursday, adding the attack also affected the party’s intranet IT system “Grüne Netz” where it exchanges confidential information.
But the party leaders were not the only victims. “More than these email addresses are affected. It is about emails with the domain ‘@gruene.de’,” a party spokesperson told POLITICO on Friday.
On Saturday, the party confirmed that Foreign Minister Baerbock and Economy Minister Habeck were affected, but said that they hadn’t used their accounts since January.
The email accounts affected were not fully infiltrated and the hackers had no direct access, the party spokesperson said on Friday.