HACKED: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hundreds of government officials

Hackers have published a big dump of private data related to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hundreds of other of the country's politicians, in what is said to be the biggest data dump of its kind ever in Germany.

Only politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany were spared.

First German MPs receive Twitter messages, asking them to admit their real sexual preferences.The hackers obtained pornographic material of them ...#BTleaks

— Julian Rpcke (@JulianRoepcke) January 4, 2019

The news was first reported by German broadcaster RBB (translated here, by Politico Europe) later confirmed by the BBC.

The stolen private information leaked online includes credit card info, scans of official identification cards, email addresses, mobile phone numbers, physical addresses, banking transactions, and chat transcripts.

The hackers even very personal data such as conversations with family members, RBB reported.

The leak happened over the course of the last few weeks via an account on Twitter that identiies itself as based in Hamburg, and describes itself with the words security researching, artist and satire & irony.

The news was first reported by German broadcaster RBB (translated here, by Politico Europe) later confirmed by the BBC.

Said German Justice Minister Katarina Barley to BBC News, The people behind this want to damage confidence in our democracy and institutions.

From Bloomberg:

It looks like the hackers got the passwords to Facebook accounts and Twitter profiles and worked their way up from there, said Simon Hegelich, a political scientist at Munichs Technical University who has studied the manipulation of social networks.