Criminals break into Austrian political party servers

Criminals have broken into the servers of the Austrian political party ÖVP. According to the party, data was stolen and falsified during the hack. The break-in came to light when confidential documents were leaked to the media and a security company was hired.

According to partijVP party leader Sebastian Kurz, the burglars had been in the systems of the Austrian People’s Party for about five weeks. Kurz told Austrian newspaper Der Standard that. According to the politician, the purpose of the hack was to steal and manipulate data, so that the current election campaign and thus the outcome of the elections could be influenced.

The hired security firm, Cybertrap, says a high-ranking party employee was hacked, with his access code stolen. With that code, the burglars could log into the administrator account of the party, Der Standard writes. At the end of July, the criminals logged into the party servers for the first time. At the end of August, the burglars copied ‘a large amount of data’ to an external server. The bookkeeping, e-mail traffic and information about the election campaign were also copied. On September 3, the burglars were discovered and their access was blocked.

Cybertrap goes on to say that the burglars were “professionals” and that traces point to foreign interference. The company is confident that it will be able to track down the burglars. According to another security firm, SEC Consult, the perpetrators covered their tracks by using Tor “and other anonymization services.”

Austria’s government fell in May after a video was circulated showing a top executive of the coalition party FP appeared to be doing business with a dubious Russian investor. The elections are scheduled for Sunday, September 29.