German Bundestag President Targeted in Signal Phishing Attack German Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, the second-highest-ranking official in Germany, was among the victims of a recent cyberattack targeting the encrypted messaging app Signal. According to a Der Spiegel report, hackers compromised Klöckner’s device as part of a broader phishing campaign against European politicians in recent months. The attack specifically targeted a Signal group chat involving Klöckner and members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) executive board, which includes Chancellor Friedrich Merz. While German domestic intelligence found no evidence of Merz’s phone being breached, at least one other CDU lawmaker was also affected. The incident follows warnings from European cybersecurity agencies in early April about a Russian-linked phishing scheme. Hackers posed as a fake Signal support chatbot to deceive users into disclosing their PIN codes. Germany’s domestic intelligence service had issued a similar alert in February. The European Commission has recommended Signal for non-work-related communications since 2020, though the app’s growing use among officials has made it a prime target for cyber espionage. Both the Bundestag and the CDU declined to comment on the breach, citing security concerns.

Bundestag – the lower house of Germany’s parliament suffered a cyber attack in June 2015. Bundestag shut down its systems including the drives of the parliamentary committee investigating allegations of BND surveillance on behalf of the NSA as a precaution. The experts from the Bundestag and the Federal Office for Information Security investigated the incident.