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German police are seeking your help in gathering information related to a MAC address that could lead to the cell phone device used by a DHL blackmailer who last year parceled out bombs at different addresses in Brandenburg and Berlin. Between November 2017 and April 2018, someone used German parcel delivery service DHL to sent out several so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in packets, demanding €10 million worth of bitcoins from the parcel service. In one event, a parcel containing nails, screws, and fireworks explosive powder was received by a pharmacy adjacent to the German Christmas market during 2017 Christmas, which eventually caused the evacuation of the market. German police later discovered a message inside that package in which the blackmailer threatened to send more parcels in the pre-Christmas season unless DHL made a 10 million euro payment in Bitcoin. During the investigation, the German police successfully communicated with the alleged blackmailer m...

German federal police have arrested a 20-year-old local student for stealing and publishing a massive trove of personal data of hundreds of politicians , journalists and other public figures last month. The young man, whose identity has not been revealed by the police, was arrested after police raided his parent's house in west-central German State of Hesse on Sunday and recovered a computer that the suspect tried to destroy 2 days before the search and a data backup. The suspect, who believed to have acted alone, has admitted of carrying out the mass hacking of German politicians out of anger at their political statements, BKA Federal Criminal Police revealed. "The accused was interrogated on 07.01.2019 by the senior prosecutor and officials of the Federal Criminal Police Office. He comprehensively acknowledged the allegations against him and provided information on his own offenses," the BKA said in a press release . "Due to a lack of grounds for detentio...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Germany has been hit with the biggest hack in its history. A group of unknown hackers has leaked highly-sensitive personal data from more than 100 German politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brandenburg's prime minister Dietmar Woidke, along with some German artists, journalists, and YouTube celebrities. The leaked data that was published on a Twitter account ( @_0rbit ) and dated back to before October 2018 includes phone numbers, email addresses, private chats, bills, credit card information and photos of victims' IDs. Although it is yet unclear who perpetrated this mass hack and how they managed to perform it, the leaked data appears to be collected unauthorizedly by hacking into their smartphones. The hack targeted all of Germany's political parties currently represented in the federal parliament, including the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Left party (Die Linke) and Greens, except for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). While Justice Minister...

The German authorities have initiated a further investigation into espionage by the United States secret service NSA and British intelligence agency GCHQ after...   ...the head of the German Federal Chancellery unit had his private laptop infected. According to a recent report published by Der Spiegel , the laptop of the Chancellery division leader was infected with Regin – a highly advanced espionage malware program that has been linked to the National Security Agency (NSA) and its UK counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). As The Hacker News reported almost a year ago, Regin is one of the most highly advanced, sophisticated malware programs that was used to spy on a wide range of international targets including: Internet service providers (ISPs) Telecommunications backbone operators Energy firms Airlines Government entities Research institutes Other high-profile individuals …around the world since at least 2008. Regin h...

This is Really Insane!! Germany's top intelligence agency handed over details related to German citizen metadata just in order to obtain a copy of the National Security Agency's Main XKeyscore software , which was first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. According to the new documents obtained by the German newspaper Die Zeit, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ( BfV - Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz ) traded data of its citizens for surveillance software from their US counterparts. Germany and the United States signed an agreement that would allow German spies to obtain a copy of the NSA's flagship tool Xkeyscore, to analyse data gathered in Germany. So they covertly illegally traded access to Germans' data with the NSA. XKeyscore surveillance software program was designed by the National Security Agency to collect and analyse intercepted data it obtains traveling over a network. The surveillance software is powerful...

After the allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA ) not only conducted mass surveillance on German citizens, but also spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's own personal mobile phone for years, surveillance has become a big issue for Germany. So big, that Germany itself started spying on U.S. According to the reports came from the German media on Friday, the German foreign intelligence agency known as Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) hacked into at least one call during Hillary Clinton's time in office as US Secretary of State. However, the time and location have not been disclosed, but Clinton's phone calls were interrupted during her phone conversations, according to the joint investigation done by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and German regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR. Although, after the story broke, some sources from the German government have denied the allegations of Clinton's phone calls interception and said that t...