Russian top diplomat Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia has detected numerous cyberattacks originating in Germany, according to comments carried by state media.

“We have expressed our concern to the German side over the situation existing in our cybersecurity cooperation,” Lavrov said after meeting German counterpart Heiko Maas in Moscow.

“We said that last year and this year we’ve exposed many cyberattacks against facilities and organisations in Russia coming from the German segment of the Internet,” Lavrov said in comments carried by state news agency TASS.

The Russian diplomat did not cite specific examples. The claim follows allegations from Germany in May that the Russia state could have been involved in a 2015 cyberattack on the German national parliament.

Germany summoned Russia’s ambassador to Berlin in May to inform him that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of a Russian national in connection with the incident.

“There is credible evidence that he [the suspect] was a member of the GRU military intelligence service at the time of the attack,” Germany’s Foreign Office said in a statement at the time.

Media reports have identified the Russian national as a member of the APT28 Russian hacking group.

APT28, also known as Sofacy or Fancy Bear, is characterised as an “advanced threat group" distinguished by its speed and use of multiple backdoor packages to gain access to targeted systems, according to a description by Russian computer security firm Kaspersky.

Identified as Russian-speaking, the hacking group “has been active since 2008, targeting mostly military and government entities in NATO countries”, as well as Ukraine, Kaspersky said.

 - dpa