Germany complains to Moscow over pre-election phishing attacks on politicians | Hacker News Reader

Germany complains to Moscow over pre-election phishing attacks on politicians

washingtonpost.com

41 pointsjustin6618 comments

Given that Germany has long been comitted to become more dependend on Russian Gas (in order to keep the Energiewende from collapsing) one can question the sincerity of this, as Germany clearly doesn't aticipate to do anything about it.

Might this all be just some voter-priming? You know, just in case the results of the upcoming Bundestag election fail to deliver confidence to the electorate about their new government's authority for full-sweeping intrusive laws. Which are of course fully needed in order to prevent "Russian Disinformation"…

The chosen dependency on Russian gas has less to do with the Energiewende than with geopolitics. There has actually been a reduction in Russian gas supplies since the end of the Cold War. Germany is dependent on gas imports from Russia but less so than many other East European countries. Not to say that there aren't worrying signals, though. Russia has delivered far less gas to Germany this year, while depleting the gas stocked in their gas storage facilities in Germany.

No. Russia has steadily been increasing its gas supplies to Germany, it's just that Germany b/c of the Energiewende (a.k.a. "the world's d*st energy policy" [1]) has been increasing its gas demand even more. Germany is gobbling up the largest share of the world's exported gas market (~>10%) [2].

> "Russia has delivered far less gas to Germany this year"

Russia's share of Germany's gas imports just increased again to more than 55% this year [3] – and this is pre NordStream 2.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11... [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgas/Tabellen_und_Grafiken#I... [3] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/151871/umfrag...*

The Russians (and other actors) must be pissing themselves laughing at how easily they can interfere with democracy by making a few strokes of the keyboard. No bullets fired, no fellow countryman's blood shed, nothing but the minor inconviencing of some electrons. Yet the West is damn near civil war based on some social media posts.

In America, we've been doing it to ourselves for decades. I would trace it to at least the mid-90s, following patterns set up in the 50s and 60s. It's the same thing we've always done, magnified first by mass media, then by social media.

I don't know why it seems to work so well in other places. Europe, presumably, has even older divisions to employ. They're hardly immune to the basic foibles of Americans.

Haven't these Russian agents heard of VPN before? I mean all this time they keep hacking us either from their homes or from the KGB offices, they're so easily traced it's pathetic...

Well, I guess it's about sending a message

Why would hiding their ip matter? This article blames Russia without even that easily faked evidence.

Or they’re domestic actors using Russian networks or tools to make their activity appear to be of Russian origin.

>The German government called on Moscow on Monday to cease "illegal cyber activities" immediately

Why do they do this? I imagine Putin crying with laughter. It's just pathetic.

Germany is rather beholden to Russian natural gas. Except for diplomatic rumblings there's not a whole lot they can do without jeopardizing themselves.

Not Germany, but its politicians.

They themselves sabotaged North Sea gas projects, and drilling for gas elsewhere in Europe, as well as Qatari gas offers.

Remaining beholden to Russian natural gas takes a lot of effort on their side.

Isn't that part of the reason why they blocked cutting Russia off from SWIFT?

It is, as for many more things.

And they are drawing "a picture of the crisis," where there is none.

Germans kept blocking gas from Netherlands, yet doing everything to keep buying it from Lootin.

They actually even sued Poland recently for them booting Russians from their pipeline: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-court-rejects-ger...

They can still opt to buy American gas shipped over the sea. The pipeline was built so they don't have to buy a multiple of what Russian gas would cost.

If Germany was really afraid of Russia, they wouldn't be gutting their military or would've made bigger rumblings when the US began downsizing its presence in the mid 2000s.

This is all a ploy on Russophobia -- particularly since every right winger is thought to be directionally Putin-like and this year is an election year with the AfD appearing to be ascendant.

Except, the AfD is not ascendant. Polls show their support has been rather stagnant at about 10-11% for quite some time now. In the last election, they got 12.6% so they have actually lost some support since then.

There is also hardly anyone doubting that Russia would conduct such an operation. It's their modus operandi. Sympathy towards Russia also does not really rely upon sympathy towards the current government but on historical links.

Source: https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm

Hence "appearing to be" and if this is working, then perhaps that's why their popularity has stagnated for so long.

Or people don't really like them.

Not taking sides, offering perspective I rarely see mentioned.

Don't think the russian governments really care, they want to focus on the east like pretty much every power center. Except European leaders that are going herp derp and give that piece of the pie to the US, kind of like how AUS is doing economic suicide that last push needed to slash its neck is China stopping its Iron ore imports.

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