Hackers blocked the website of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday in an online attack claimed by a pro-Russian group opposed to the Ukrainian government.
Merkel’s official website and those of the government and the Bundestag lower house of parliament were temporarily inaccessible after what spokesman Steffen Seibert called a “serious attack”.
He said the attacks began around 0900 GMT, when the overloaded sites crashed.
“The data centre of our service provider is under serious attack, apparently caused by diverse external systems,” Seibert said, adding he had no further details.
The German foreign ministry website was also temporarily hit, a spokesman confirmed.
Hackers calling themselves “CyberBerkut” said in a statement they were behind the blocking of the chancellor’s and Bundestag websites.
The move came as Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was visiting Berlin, where he was due to meet German President Joachim Gauck later Wednesday and Merkel on Thursday.
The hackers said they appealed to Germany “to stop financial and political support of (the) criminal regime in Kiev, which unleashed a bloody civil war”.
The group said Yatsenyuk hoped to gain financial help from the EU and IMF “to extend the war and not to restore (the) collapsed infrastructure of our country”.

More from AFP
- Amazon Settles Ring Customer Spying Complaint
- France Punishes Clearview AI For Failing To Pay Fine
- Twitter Celebrity Hacker Pleads Guilty in US
- Pro-Russian Hackers Claim Downing of French Senate Website
- Microsoft Expands AI Access to Public
- Hackers Promise AI, Install Malware Instead
- Australian Finance Company Refuses Hackers’ Ransom Demand
- Tesla Sued Over Workers’ Alleged Access to Car Video Imagery
Latest News
- Insider Q&A: Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity In Military Tech
- In Other News: Government Use of Spyware, New Industrial Security Tools, Japan Router Hack
- OpenAI Unveils Million-Dollar Cybersecurity Grant Program
- Galvanick Banks $10 Million for Industrial XDR Technology
- Information of 2.5M People Stolen in Ransomware Attack at Massachusetts Health Insurer
- US, South Korea Detail North Korea’s Social Engineering Techniques
- High-Severity Vulnerabilities Patched in Splunk Enterprise
- Idaho Hospitals Working to Resume Full Operations After Cyberattack
