{"id":5101,"date":"2026-04-03T03:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/5101\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:27:13","slug":"the-eu-is-suffering-a-hacking-crisis-heres-what-we-know-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/5101\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU is suffering a hacking crisis. Here\u2019s what we know. \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>European governments are increasingly encouraging their officials to move away from Signal and similar services like WhatsApp and Threema, which, though secure, are less easily controlled and monitored. <a href=\"https:\/\/element.io\/en\/case-studies\/tchap\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">France<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/bundesmessenger.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Germany<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.luxchat.lu\/en\/technical-details\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Luxembourg<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/element.io\/blog\/nato-ni2ce-messenger-utilises-the-power-of-decentralised-communication\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NATO<\/a> and most recently <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.politico.eu\/news\/215394\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Belgium<\/a> have switched to in-house versions. The EU also has plans for \u201can interoperable set of secure communication solutions,\u201d according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu\/en\/library\/cyber-blueprint-draft-council-recommendation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">document<\/a> released last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The use of Signal by government officials came under intense scrutiny after senior members of the Trump administration last year were found to be exchanging military plans and classified information on the app \u2014 in a catastrophic breach of security that became known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/12\/04\/pentagon-releases-report-on-hegseths-signal-chats-00676662\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Signalgate<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>3. Moscow and cybercriminals both get blame<\/p>\n<p>National security services have blamed the Kremlin for the recent campaigns targeting public officials on Signal. It\u2019s unusual for cyber and intelligence agencies to explicitly say who they think is responsible for an attack while it is still ongoing \u2014 that process usually takes place some time after the event, and requires political and diplomatic approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO with regard to shutting down the Signal group: &#8220;We do not comment on internal security practices. We take cybersecurity risks very seriously and have clear internal guidelines for our staff.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to the hack of EU cloud services, officials have pointed to a major cybercriminal group. CERT-EU <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.politico.eu\/news\/216028\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">said<\/a> Thursday that the ShinyHunters hacking group was to blame for the attack, adding that the group leaked 340GB\u00a0of Commission data on the dark web.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>ShinyHunters was previously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/media-telecom\/hacking-group-begins-leaking-customer-data-dutch-telecom-odido-hack-2026-02-26\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">linked<\/a> to a major hack of a Dutch telecom operator in February, and is part of a wider web of cybercrime groups that claimed responsibility for a hack of Jaguar Land Rover that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sustainability\/boards-policy-regulation\/jaguar-land-rover-hack-cost-uk-economy-25-billion-report-says-2025-10-22\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">knocked<\/a> approximately \u20ac2.2 billion off the United Kingdom\u2019s economy last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The hacking group is English-speaking and is known for sophisticated scams. It previously received global attention after <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-are-shinyhunters-the-hackers-that-attacked-google-should-we-all-be-worried-264271\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">attacking Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European governments are increasingly encouraging their officials to move away from Signal and similar services like WhatsApp and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4781,660,3223,486,588,661,39,40,662,663,99,4098,1920,4782],"class_list":{"0":"post-5101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-breaches","9":"tag-cloud","10":"tag-communications","11":"tag-cybercrime","12":"tag-cybersecurity","13":"tag-data","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-hackers","17":"tag-infrastructure","18":"tag-intelligence","19":"tag-mobile","20":"tag-software","21":"tag-telecoms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}