German Army: “More than 6,000 meetings can be found on the Internet,” the weekly website assures

Do you know the name and participants of the “confidential defense” meeting of the German army? A children’s game for those who have at least a little knowledge of computers. A computer security breach allowed information on the German army’s holding of at least 6,000 video conferences on the Webex platform to be accessed, Zeit Online reported on Saturday, two months after embarrassing leaks through the same tool.

When searching a news site, one could access the title, date, time, or name of the person inviting important Bundeswehr meetings on Webex. “More than 6,000 meetings can be found online,” Zeit writes, some of which were classified, such as on the topic of Ukraine’s demand for long-range Taurus missiles or the “digital battlefield.”

Simple IT structure, no password

In addition, the virtual conference rooms allocated to the 248,000 members of the Bundeswehr were easily identifiable thanks to a simple IT architecture and were not password protected. The website of the weekly die Zeit reports that, among other things, a digital conference room of Ingo Gerhartz, head of the German Air Force, was discovered.

The latter’s name came up in March when a confidential conversation between senior Bundeswehr officers surfaced. Ingo Gerhartz was among the service employees who allegedly did not use the required Webex login. The interception of this conversation by Russian intelligence services caused a scandal in Germany and embarrassed the country in front of its allies. Berlin justified the leaks as an “individual mistake”

According to Zeit Online, the German army only learned of the security breach after questions from journalists. “” “The vulnerability was discovered by a team of IT security experts from the Netzbegrünung association. Zeit online has verified this independently,” explains the association on the social network X. On its website it offers “more detailed information” on this issue.

When asked by AFP, a spokesman for the Bundeswehr’s “cyberspace and information” command confirmed that the army’s copy of Webex “has a flaw” and that it was corrected “within 24 hours” as soon as it became known. “It was not possible to participate in video conferences without the participants’ knowledge or permission; Thus, no sensitive content can leave the conferences,” the representative assured.

According to Zeit Online, the Webex bodies of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Economic Affairs have the same defects, and the media were able to connect on Saturday to the digital meeting rooms of Olaf Scholz and Vice President Robert Habeck. -chancellor.