Experts hunting data hackers

German cyberdefence experts are trying to figure out how the personal data and documents of hundreds of German politicians and others were obtained and posted online.

The data breach hit politicians at all levels, including the European, German and state parliaments as well as municipal officials, said Martina Fietz, a spokeswoman for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

‘‘The German government takes this incident very seriously,’’ she said, adding that the country’s cyberdefence centre was investigating the breach.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said an initial analysis suggested that the material was obtained from cloud services, email accounts or social networks. He said there was no indication that federal government or parliament computer systems were compromised.

‘‘It appears, at first sight, that no sensitive information and data are included in what was published, including regarding the chancellor,’’ Fietz said.

Public broadcaster RBB, which first reported on the issue, said there appeared to be no method to what was posted via a Twitter account.

Although the data reportedly includes information such as cellphone numbers, addresses, internal party communications and, in some cases, personal bills and credit card details – some of them years old – RBB said there appeared to be no politically sensitive documents.

German news agency DPA reported that the information included a fax number and email address belonging to Merkel and several letters to and from the chancellor.

The Twitter account in question, which was later suspended, had been active since mid-2017.

The links it posted suggested that information on politicians from all parties in parliament – except the far-right Alternative for Germany – had been shared in daily batches before Christmas, along with data on other public figures.

The head of Germany’s IT security agency, Arne Schoenbohm, said authorities had been aware of individual cases in December, but material was posted online on a large scale on Friday. He said the agency believed data on about 1000 people was involved.

Schoenbohm said there had been ‘‘a high two-digit number of attacks which were very successful’’ in which accounts were infiltrated and data and documents, such as copies of ID cards, extracted.

‘‘Via this infection, it seems that other data could be tapped, such as first and last names but also cellphone numbers.’’

In many cases, he said, the information was limited or already publicly available.

Germany has seen cyberattacks on government and parliament computer systems in recent years in which Russianbacked hackers were suspected.