Spam-bombing attack disables email inboxes of Left party MPs
Bundestag members of the Left party fell victim to a massive cyber attack. A spam-bombing assault flooded their email inboxes with millions of messages.
Cyber attack on Bundestag emails
Bundestag members of the Die Linke parliamentary group fell victim to a coordinated cyber attack. According to Die Zeit Kriminalität, attackers disabled their email inboxes through so-called spam-bombing — an assault in which thousands or millions of emails are sent simultaneously to overload the systems.
The affected parliamentarians were unable to access their inboxes for several hours. The suspected attack affected exclusively the Die Linke parliamentary group; other Bundestag factions experienced no comparable outages. The attack prevented normal communication among the MPs during working hours.
Bundestag IT security was alerted following the incident. Investigations into identifying the attackers and their motives are underway. Thus far there are no public indications of responsibility by state or non-state actors. Spam-bombing attacks are considered relatively unsophisticated and are frequently deployed for disruption purposes against organisations or individuals.
Source: Die Zeit Kriminalität