REPORT: Russia hacked the German parliament

The German government believes that a recent hack of the country's parliament came from Russia, and it looks like a state-sponsored attack.

The Register reports, citing an article published in Der Spiegel, that Russia is the "chief suspect" in the investigation into the hack, which occurred in May.

Deutsche Welle reports that German officials admitted that the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, was breached, and hackers made away with data from its network.

The hack was first discovered when two computers infected with malicious software tried to contact a server in Eastern Europe to transfer stolen data. IT staff at the Bundestag noticed the attempt to smuggle out the data, but realised that other computers had also been compromised.

Now the finger of blame for the hack is pointing at Russia. The Register reports that investigators have managed to read the source code used to hack into the German parliament, and it looks similar to an attack in 2014 on a German data network that was traced back to Russia.