The EU has for the first time acknowledged attacks by foreign governments on the accounts of its officials

Hackers acting with the support of foreign governments tried to gain access to the messaging accounts of senior European Union officials. The EU has officially acknowledged for the first time that such attacks were carried out in the interests of other states.

This was reported by Politico, citing an internal presentation by the EU's cyber unit which was presented to member state governments in July.

The takeover of senior officials' accounts is named in the document as one of the main cyber threats to the European Union in 2026. Targeted phishing and social engineering methods were used in the attacks: potential victims were sent personalized messages to force them to click on malicious links or open infected files.

Politico notes that this is the first time an EU body has officially linked such attacks specifically to foreign governments. However, the document does not specify which states were behind specific hacking attempts.

Previously, a number of European intelligence agencies warned about campaigns against WhatsApp and Signal users. In particular, Dutch intelligence linked similar operations to Russia. Among other things, the attackers posed as Signal support and tried to obtain codes that would allow them to take over accounts and read new messages and group chats.

Amid these risks, the European Commission previously recommended that some senior officials stop using one of the group chats on Signal.

According to internal presentation data, EU institutions have faced eight "significant" cyber incidents since the beginning of the year. One of the remaining problems is that different Union bodies use different cybersecurity systems and lack a unified solution for exchanging confidential and classified documents.

Based on materials from: Politico