Police have arrested a suspect over a large-scale data breach which saw the personal details of hundreds of German politicians stolen and posted online. The 20-year-old man was arrested during a search of his apartment in Hesse. Chancellor Angela Merkel was among those who had their data published, while the leak also affected celebrities and journalists. Private chats, contact information and financial details were all published on Twitter in the leak. The far-right AfD appeared to be the only mainstream political party to escape attack.
The suspect has confessed, according to security sources cited by Germany’s DPA press agency. He has been in detention since Sunday.
However, police have not confirmed the confession and were scheduled to announce further details at a press conference on Tuesday.
The data was published on a Twitter account belonging to user named @_0rbit, which has since been suspended. The biography of the account described itself as involved in “security research”.
Each leak was published in a “advent calendar event”, with a new set posted daily in December – but the breach only came to mainstream attention late last week.
Almost 1,000 politicians, celebrities and journalists were affected by the leak – including some 50 attacks that were “more serious”, involving private correspondence or photos.
Another TV satirist, Christian Ehring, is said to have had 3.4 gigabytes of data stolen and posted online, including holiday photos. Last year he won a court case brought by AfD leader Alice Weidel, who complained when he called her a “slut” on his TV show.
Centre-left SPD MP Florian Post said he felt “quite shocked” by the leak of account statements and other details online, but he added that at least one file that had been posted was fake.
The fallout has created widespread alarm politically. Robert Habeck, leader of the Greens, deleted both his Twitter and Facebook accounts on Monday after being affected by the data breach. Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer was scheduled to address reporters on Tuesday about the fallout from the data breach. On Friday, German information security officials said it was unknown whether the data was taken from a single attack on a central repository, or though multiple attacks on private communications.
