A leaked NSA intercept shows that German FM Steinmeier was relieved to have “not received any definitive response” from the US on its rendition program at the time of the scandal, which exempted him from the need to act on the matter.

The WikiLeaks publication intercept of the German FM’s communications, which was undertaken after his official visit to the US in November, 2005. After the first reports on "rendition flights" emerged in the media, European governments denied any knowledge of the CIA program, but continued providing airspace and airport facilities to the US security agency which facilitated it.

All software and hardware in the German parliamentary network might need to be replaced. More than four weeks after a cyberattack, the government hasn’t managed to erase spyware from the system.

Trojans introduced to the Bundestag network are still working and are still sending data from the internal network to an unknown destination, several anonymous parliament sources told. In May, parliament IT specialists discovered hackers were trying to infiltrate the network. So far, they have been unable to mitigate the attack. People in parliament are already talking about a possible replacement of the whole system. 

The German secret service BND has pulled the plug on the internet surveillance program for the US National Security Agency amid the growing scandal over its extent of cooperation in spying on its EU partners.

The German Federal Intelligence Service stopped sharing internet surveillance data with the NSA on Monday. Berlin has demanded that the US spy agency first file an official request explaining the need for the internet-based data from Germany’s Bad Aibling listening post in Bavaria, where 120 BND employees and some NSA technicians work. The NSA has reportedly refused to comply with the security request due to short notice. 

Germany's intelligence service has been helping the NSA spy on European politicians and companies for years. The NSA has been sending lists of "selectors" to the BND, which then provides related information that it holds in its surveillance databases.

The NSA sent selector lists several times a day, and altogether 800,000 selectors have been requested. Investigators found that the BND had provided information on around 2,000 selectors that were clearly against European and German interests. Not only were European businesses such as the giant aerospace and defense company EADS targeted, so were European politicians.

German engineers create a machine which can scan an object, destroying it in the process, then transmit it over the internet and recreate it anywhere in the world using a 3D printer. Could it be the first prototype of a teleportation machine?

German engineers have created a machine which can take a physical object, scan it, and re-build it in a new location. Because it is effectively an early prototype for a Star Trek transporter the group have called it "Scotty" after the chief engineer on the Starship Enterprise, who Captain Kirk was regularly seen to order: "beam me up". The machine scans small objects with a camera layer-by-layer.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has fallen victim to hacking after a sophisticated computer virus was discovered on the USB drive of one of her aides. The Reign virus, which is believed to have been developed by US and British spying agencies, was detected after one of Mrs Merkel's employees plugged her personal drive into a work laptop. 

The woman, who works in close contact with Mrs Merkel, had loaded a speech she was editing on to the drive, took it home to continue working on it, before returning to the office. As she went to plug the drive back into her work computer she was sent a firewall alert saying a virus had been detected. 

One hacker says he has developed a way to copy fingerprints using a common digital camera. A member of Europe's oldest hacker collective demonstration included creating, he claims, a digital copy of a fingerprint of Germany's federal minister of defense, Ursula von der Leyen, using commercially available software.

He said he had a photographer snap high-resolution photos of von der Leyen's fingers while she was at a presentation – standing nine feet away from the official. Krissler said he wasn't able to verify von der Leyen's fingerprint was accurate, but he was still confident it was a workable copy. 

DHL has announced the maiden voyage of their "Parcelcopter" will be made in Germany. The unmanned drone service will be used to transfer drugs and other urgent medical supplies to a pharmacy on a remote island off the North coast. This is the first time an autonomous aircraft has been authorised to deliver goods in Europe.

The drone has been cleared by the German transport ministry and air traffic control to use a restricted airspace now reserved purely for the Parcelcopter's delivery missions, where the flight zone is mostly open water. If this is successful, DHL could well be on their way to challenging Amazon's Prime Air project. 

The prototype real time social media monitor will only look at publicly available data though, according to the plans. Germany's foreign intelligence agency reportedly wants to spend on technology that would let it spy in real time on social networks outside of Germany.

The system for real time social network monitoring is still in the construction phase. But a prototype is expected to be launched next June with the aim of monitoring publicly available data on Twitter and blogs. The program should filter out and discard data in the German language. Moreover, a plan to monitor Internet exchanges outside Germany is also in the works.

A company that develops cyber security and information security products and services to defend organizations against cyber attacks and to protect critical assets has published a new report and introduced a list of countries most under threat from cyber attack.

APTs are complex attacks by hackers for which complicated techniques are used to sneak into a network and carry out prolonged information gathering attacks. They are often carried out by state-backed players or sophisticated criminals and have an element of human control, in contrast with some cyberattacks solely carried out by an automated piece of code.