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Pro-Russian cyberattacks bring down German government websites
The digital war over Ukraine isn't about to cool down any time soon. A group of pro-Russian hackers calling itself CyberBerkut is taking credit for cyberattacks that brought down German government websites, including those for Chancellor Angela Merkel, the foreign ministry and the lower parliament. Officials aren't pointing any fingers, but CyberBerkut is claiming that the breach is in retaliation for German support of the "criminal regime in Kiev." The attack came soon before German and Ukrainian leaders were going to meet, so the timing of the incident at least lines up with the group's motivations.
NSA may have spied on 122 foreign leaders
We've known for a while that the NSA has spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other international leaders, but it now looks like that surveillance was just the tip of the iceberg. Der Spiegel and The Intercept have published an Edward Snowden leak revealing that the NSA snooped on as many as 122 foreign heads of state in 2009, ranging from Merkel to Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. A custom search system, Nymrod, helped the US agency both locate transcripts of those leaders' communications as well as secret reports. The National Security Council tells The Intercept that President Obama's administration hasn't tracked Merkel and doesn't plan to start, but it also didn't deny that the German leader had once been under close watch.
