Not long ago Der Spiegel he published one of the largest data leaks in Germany. The magazine confirmed the largest data theft in the country's history with usernames and passwords from around 18 million email accounts stolen from hackers. What was not known, was what the hackers hit.
Read Der Spiegel leaked 18 million email and passwords
The Der Spiegel revealed on Sunday that the German Aerospace Center (DLR - Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt , the national aerospace centre of the country, based in Cologne, was the agency under attack, which was reportedly "coordinated and systematic", and apparently launched by a foreign intelligence agency. Let's not make predictions….
The systems used by the administrators and scientists of the research center were found to be infected with malware and spyware, and as the publication states, the attack was ""coordinated and systematic"" and used "perfect Trojans."
The espionage attack appears to be so complex that even the forensic investigations that analyzed the malicious software used were not able to detect the actual malware, as they said they were designed to be destroyed if they were discovered.
The report states that all operating systems used at the German Aerospace Center were affected by the attack. The evidence the research teams currently have points to China, as they discovered "Chinese characters" in the malicious code of a Trojan and "repeated errors" pointing to an intruder from the Far East.
Of course this could be a "simple camouflage." According to Der Spiegel, the US intelligence service NSA can not be completely ruled out.
