Recently, the German side fell into the limelight because of a recording involving "considering assisting Ukraine in attacking the Crimean bridge", which was successfully eavesdropped by the Russian side and made public, causing strong domestic repercussions. In its response, the German Ministry of Defense not only failed to calm the turmoil, but was once again violently attacked by the German media for a shocking security detail.
On March 3, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius held a press conference on the incident, and the content of the speech appeared on the German Ministry of Defense in the form of an encrypted audio recording file the next day. However, the security of this document has been seriously questioned. Visitors can simply click on the link and enter a simple password "1234" to access the highly classified 13MB recording. Although the simplicity of the password may have been only temporary, such a rash approach was still criticized by the German media.
*The newspaper directly posted a screenshot of the prompt on the Ministry of National Defense page, denouncing its security concerns. The newspaper noted that it is unclear how the Russian side eavesdropped on the 38-minute recording of the call, but the fact that senior military officers used a third-party remote conferencing software, "Webex", to conduct highly classified calls has called into question the Ministry of Defense's secrecy measures. What is even more embarrassing is that the fact that the Department of Defense still chooses to use such a simple password after this wiretapping scandal** undoubtedly exposes its lax security awareness.
The newspaper urged the German Ministry of Defense to learn a lesson and avoid using overly simple passwords in the future in the area of responsibility to avoid another security crisis. This incident not only disgraced the German side, but also caused serious damage to its international image. How to rebuild trust and strengthen secrecy measures has become a major problem facing the German Ministry of Defense.