Internet
Other federal states affected by cyber attacks
Hackers at work: “There was no damage, except that the websites were temporarily unavailable” (symbol image). photo
© Nicolas Armer/dpa
Cyber attacks paralyze the websites of public authorities in several federal states. It is being determined at full speed. Initial indications point to a pro-Russian background.
Other federal states are also affected by cyber attacks affecting the websites of public authorities. The Schleswig-Holstein state portal was temporarily unavailable on Wednesday.
In Brandenburg, the police website was disrupted. In the Saarland, websites of the state government could sometimes not be reached or with delays, and access to the websites of the Berlin authorities also took longer. In Thuringia, the Interior Ministry and the police were attacked by hackers from Germany and abroad from Wednesday morning.
Hacker attacks on websites of ministries or the police in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony were already known on Tuesday. “We assume that the attacks in the various federal states were coordinated,” said Saxony-Anhalt’s Digital Minister Lydia Hüskens (FDP).
Computer sabotage investigation
Never before has there been such a major attack on the websites of the Berlin state administration, said State Secretary for Digital Affairs in the Senate Department for the Interior, Ralf Kleindiek, on RBB. However, no data was leaked or stolen.
In Lower Saxony, investigations into computer sabotage were initiated against unknown persons. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice explained that there had been an increase in access from foreign addresses. It is being investigated in all directions, but there are indications of a pro-Russian background, said a spokesman for the Verden public prosecutor. According to the Ministry of the Interior, many police websites in the state were unavailable on Tuesday. The cyber attack continues, but the websites can now be accessed again.
“One or the other citizen will have circumstances,” said a police spokeswoman in Brandenburg, where the attack paralyzed online services. The State Criminal Police Office is investigating on suspicion of computer sabotage.
Ukraine platform attacked
In Saxony-Anhalt, the State Criminal Police Office began investigating on Tuesday. “There was no damage, except that the websites were temporarily unavailable,” said Digital Minister Hüskens. According to their information, the website of the superordinate state portal sachsen-anhalt.de had to be shut down so that the state administration could have continued to work with its IT system. The hackers paralyzed the site with a so-called DDoS attack, i.e. by deliberately overloading servers with mass requests. There was also talk of encumbrance attacks in Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
On Tuesday, hackers again targeted a German Development Ministry platform for reconstruction in Ukraine. The security authorities of the federal government and the affected countries are involved and exchanged information, a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Nothing can be said about possible connections between the attacks.