Germany's parliament gives its spy agencies the power to hack and sabotage adversaries

Germany's Bundestag passed a reform of the country's intelligence laws on November 13, with 308 votes in favour, 190 against and 71 abstentions. According to the Bundestag, the foreign intelligence service BND and the domestic Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) gain powers to break into adversaries' IT systems, and the BND may act against threats itself: getting into the networks of chemical weapons labs and drone factories to sabotage production, or shutting down servers run by state hacking groups. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt called it a "reform of the century".

We covered the package in August, when the cabinet approved it. It has now passed with amendments from the interior committee.

The interior ministry describes access to other people's devices as a scale, from "low-intensity" measures, for example against a smart fridge, to serious intrusion into a privately used mobile phone. Among the ministry's examples: deleting stolen victim data from a hacking group's servers, or slipping faulty components into a delivery.

Read the full article on vpnlab.io: https://vpnlab.io/en/bundestag-passes-intelligence-law-hacking-sabotage-3376