Germany summons Russian diplomat over cyberattack on ruling party (Lead)

Germany has summoned the Acting Charge d Affaires of the Russian embassy in response to a Russian cyberattack on the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) last year.

He has been summoned for noon, a spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry announced in Berlin on Friday.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin blames a unit of the Russian military intelligence service GRU for a 2023 cyberattack on the centre-left SPD, which is in coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).

“Russian state hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace,” Baerbock said in Adelaide during a visit to Australia, adding there would be consequences.

In June 2023, the SPD said that email accounts belonging to its executive had been the target of a cyberattack earlier that year.

According to the SPD, this was made possible by a security vulnerability in software, which was not known at the time of the attack. “It cannot be ruled out that data was leaked from individual email inboxes,” an SPD statement said.