(ANSA) - TRIESTE - Top German intelligence officials urged lawmakers to give them greater legal authority to "hack back" in the event of cyber attacks from foreign powers, Reuters Said. Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV domestic intelligence agency, told the parliamentary oversight committee it should be possible to destroy data stolen from German servers and moved to foreign servers to prevent it from being misused. He said it would also make sense to "infect" foreign servers with software that would enable greater surveillance of any operations directed against German cyber targets, or to extract data, much as human agents are recruited for counter-espionage. Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency already has the expertise, but not the legal authority, to destroy foreign servers, its chief Bruno Kahl told the committee.

German officials have blamed APT28, a Russian hacker group said linked to Moscow, for the May 2015 hack of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, and other cyber attacks aimed at political groups, individuals or institutions. (ANSA).