Germany accused Bundestag electrician of spying for Russia
The German Prosecutor General's Office has filed charges against a German, suspected of working for Russian intelligence.
The name of the accused is Jens F.. His full name is not provided.
The individual worked for a company that was a contractor for the Bundestag and was inspecting electrical appliances in buildings used by the German Parliament and its support services. He had access to floor plans of these buildings.
"Between the end of July 2017 and the beginning of September 2017, the accused decided on his own initiative to pass on information about the property of the German Bundestag to the Russian special services. To do this, he prepared a storage device with relevant files in the PDF format and sent it to an employee of the Russian Embassy in Berlin, who is working in the Russian military intelligence or GRU," the Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement.
Earlier, the German prosecutor's office accused "Russian hackers" of a cyberattack on the Bundestag computer systems in 2015. Then, a Trojan program was allegedly injected in the Bundestag’s computer system. As a result, the attackers gained access to the internal documents of the German parliament. In May 2020, the German prosecutor's office issued an arrest warrant for Russian citizen Dmitry Badin on charges of hacking.
Der Spiegel wrote that hacker groups Sofacy and APT28 were involved in the cyberattack on German government’s websites. According to German intelligence services, these hackers are "funded by the Russian government."