Germany's domestic intelligence agency has warned that Russia is trying to sabotage critical infrastructure through cyberspying.
The BfV agency said on May 13 that Russian intelligence agencies appear to be behind a range of "aggressive" attacks in the last decade, including last year's Sofacy hit on the German parliament and APT 28 hit on NATO members that knocked a French TV station off the air, as well as a hack code-named "Sandworm" that brought down part of Ukraine's power grid last year.
"Cyberspace is a place of hybrid warfare," said BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen, referring to a mixture of conventional attacks, special operations, sabotage, and propaganda.
"The information security of German government, administrative, business, science, and research institutions is under permanent threat," he said.
"The campaigns observed by the BfV are generally directed at obtaining information, i.e espionage," he said, but Russian cyberspies "are also showing a readiness to sabotage."
Germany's Defense Ministry announced recently that it is creating its own cyberwarfare department in response to what it says is the growing threat of electronic attacks.
