German agency defends response to hacking

BERLIN — Germany’s IT security agency on Saturday defended its response to the leaking of hundreds of politicians’ private information, after lawmakers accused it of failing to inform them quickly enough.

Politicians from several parties questioned why the Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, didn’t alert Parliament about the suspected hacking case when it first came to light in December.

In a statement, the agency acknowledged it was approached by one lawmaker about suspicious activity on his private email and social media accounts in early December, but it said it believed at the time his experience was a one-off case.

“The BSI took this case very serious and took it up with the National Cyber Defense Center,” the agency said in a statement, adding that it wasn’t aware of the planned mass online leak of data that occurred Thursday via Twitter.

“It was impossible to foresee at the start of December 2018 that there would be further cases,” the BSI said.

The statement appeared to contradict comments by BSI chief Arne Schoenbohm, who told public broadcaster Phoenix on Friday his agency had spoken to “individual lawmakers who were affected by this very early on in December.”

As many as 1,000 German politicians and celebrities are believed to have been affected by the breach of data that includes private addresses, cellphone numbers, chat records and credit card numbers.

Authorities are still investigating who was behind the theft and publication of the information, which didn’t include any data on lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

The information, while potentially embarrassing to some lawmakers, doesn’t appear to have revealed any major political scandals. The leak has once again sparked debate about cybersecurity in Germany.