Spy chief replaced after damning report

Nuke plant infected with computer viruses

BERLIN, April 27, (Agencies): Germany announced Wednesday it is replacing the head of its foreign intelligence service, which has been rocked by revelations it helped the US National Security Agency spy on European targets.

Gerhard Schindler, 63, will take early retirement from July 1, leaving the reins of the BND service to Bruno Kahl, a trained lawyer and currently high-ranking finance ministry official.

“The BND faces major challenges in coming years,” said Peter Altmaier, chief of staff of Angela Merkel’s chancellery, in a statement.

These “include the development of its profile given the changing security challenges” as well as the “organisational and legal consequences of the work of the NSA investigation committee,” he added.

Altmaier did not spell out the reasons for Schindler’s departure and government spokesman Steffen Seibert declined comment when asked at a regular press briefing.

Combination

But German media speculated that the change was down to a combination of factors that included the BND’s controversial cooperation with the NSA.

An investigation committee said in a report seen by AFP in October that the NSA had handed lists of European government offices as targets for espionage to the BND, with the request for the results be sent back to the United States.

Although the report found that the BND whittled down the list of thousands of NSA targets over the years, it still maintained cooperation with Washington.

Beyond the consequences of the NSA scandal, German media said the change at the top of the BND was also partly motivated by the need for reform at the service to increasingly cover cybersecurity, and to oversee a complex move of the headquarters from the western city of Pullach to Berlin.

Kahl is a trusted aide of Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, and has been leading a ministry division in charge of privatisations, investments and federal real estate.

Meanwhile, a nuclear power plant in Germany has been found to be infected with computer viruses, but they appear not to have posed a threat to the facility’s operations because it is isolated from the Internet, the station’s operator said on Tuesday.

The Gundremmingen plant, located about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Munich, is run by the German utility RWE.

The viruses, which include “W32. Ramnit” and “Conficker”, were discovered at Gundremmingen’s B unit in a computer system retrofitted in 2008 with data visualisation software associated with equipment for moving nuclear fuel rods, RWE said.

Malware was also found on 18 removable data drives, mainly USB sticks, in office computers maintained separately from the plant’s operating systems. RWE said it had increased cyber-security measures as a result.

W32.Ramnit is designed to steal files from infected computers and targets Microsoft Windows software, according to the security firm Symantec. First discovered in 2010, it is distributed through data sticks, among other methods, and is intended to give an attacker remote control over a system when it is connected to the Internet.

Conficker has infected millions of Windows computers worldwide since it first came to light in 2008. It is able to spread through networks and by copying itself onto removable data drives, Symantec said.

RWE has informed Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), which is working with IT specialists at the group to look into the incident.

The BSI was not immediately available for comment.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finland-based F-Secure, said that infections of critical infrastructure were surprisingly common, but that they were generally not dangerous unless the plant had been targeted specifically.

The most common viruses spread without much awareness of where they are, he said.

As an example, Hypponen said he had recently spoken to a European aircraft maker that said it cleans the cockpits of its planes every week of malware designed for Android phones. The malware spread to the planes only because factory employees were charging their phones with the USB port in the cockpit.

Because the plane runs a different operating system, nothing would befall it. But it would pass the virus on to other devices that plugged into the charger.

In 2013, a computer virus attacked a turbine control system at a U.S. power company after a technician inserted an infected USB computer drive into the network, keeping a plant off line for three weeks.

After Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster five years ago, concern in Germany over the safety of nuclear power triggered a decision by the government to speed up the shutdown of nuclear plants. Tuesday was the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Germany’s foreign minister has expressed regret over the fact that his country’s diplomats failed for years to act on abuses at a secretive German colony in Chile.

For three decades from 1961 onward the enclave of Colonia Dignidad, or Dignity Colony, was the site of torture, slavery and child abuse.

The enclave’s history features in a recent movie starring Emma Watson and Daniel Bruehl.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says the German embassy’s failure to help people who fled the colony was “no glorious chapter” in his country’s diplomatic history.

Steinmeier said Tuesday that he has ordered documents about the colony until 1996 to be unclassified for research purposes.