Signalgate: Security authorities have a council for German politics

Berliner Morgenpost Signalgate: Security authorities have a council for German politics Christian Unger • 17 hours • 2 minutes read The experts' assessment is devastating: negligent, appalling. These are the reactions after it became known that high-ranking members of the US government shared highly sensitive plans for a military attack in Yemen in a group chat – and a journalist was able to read along. The incident brings back memories of a wiretapping scandal that the Bundeswehr experienced a year ago. Four top Bundeswehr officers, including Air Force Chief Ingo Gerhartz, discussed explosive military information in the context of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. The problem: They weren't using an encrypted line, but rather the video conferencing software Webex. An officer from Singapore joined the call via cell phone, apparently via a hotel's Wi-Fi. And a hacker suspected of being loyal to Russia was listening in. In both cases, one thing is clear: the security breach was not caused by weak and vulnerable technology. It's human errors and negligence that serve as a gateway for outsiders – cybercriminals, foreign intelligence services, or, as is now the case in the US, journalists. Soldiers in the Bundeswehr, politicians in the Bundestag, employees of political foundations and in the administration – they are all targets of foreign espionage. And they all use email, video conferencing software, and messaging services like Signal and, above all, WhatsApp. A few years ago, 40,000 internal chat messages from AfD members of parliament were leaked to the media. According to research by ARD, these messages contained "numerous radical, racist, and offensive statements." When the Bundeswehr officers were wiretapped, they were not using a chat group, but rather the software WebEx, a platform from the US technology company Cisco. Ministries, political parties, and members of the Bundestag use WebEx for meetings, both internal and background discussions with journalists. Business trips, as well as increased workdays in the home office, are making video software a part of everyday technology. WebEx appointments can be encrypted with a password. For conferences and meetings in the digital space, government employees often connect via the program "BigBlueBotton," a software also used by the Bundeswehr. This program is used when the conversations are classified as "secret." Or, as it is called in official German, "for official use only." Officials say that employees are being made even more aware of the need to be cautious in their communications. "We know that foreign intelligence services are listening in," says a German official. In most cases, he means Russia. "It's often operator errors, not technical penetration of systems," says Sinan Selen, Deputy Head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This used to be called "radio discipline," meaning caution when sharing information over open connections. "If you listen to the phone calls on the ICE train from Berlin to Cologne, you don't need a Russian cyberattack," says Selen. It shows where the intelligence service sees the greatest weakness in espionage: in people.