Merkel Aide Allegedly Hacked by U.S.-Made Spyware

The Regin malware in question has been linked to British and U.S. intelligence agencies.

A USB stick apparently transferred the surveillance software, according to the German newspaper Bild.

The victim, who works in close contact with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had written a draft of a speech on her work machine, which she then took home on the flash drive and edited on her private laptop.

She later saved the document from her home laptop onto the USB stick and brought it back into the office, to insert into her work computer. At that point, a virus alert went off.

The employee is a unit head in the Department for European Policy.

“Sources said the incident happened in the first half of this year and cautioned that there was nothing to link such a Trojan attack with the United States, since anyone could have copied Regin and adapted it for their own ends, as hackers normally do," DPA reports.

According to Symantec, the Regin spyware can make screenshots, control a mouse cursor, steal passwords, monitor data traffic and restore deleted data.

The German government refuted accounts of the hack, RT reports.

"Such a pattern of attack has explicitly not occurred," government spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said. She added that the Federal Chancellery systems were not infected. "That is, in this context, the most important statement."