The Munich publishing group has become the victim of a hacker attack. At the company, which claims to be the largest German non-fiction publisher, the data on the IT systems was encrypted by unknown criminals. A company spokeswoman said on Friday that the employees no longer had access to the data on the servers. At first she had Evening News reported about the hacker attack.
The group includes several publishers such as Riva, Lago or Mi-Wirtschaftsbuch. All data is currently gone, the spokeswoman said. “We are starting all over again and cannot yet estimate how long it will be before we can fully resume normal operations.” An IT security company was commissioned to investigate the attack.
The publishing group is currently not assuming that the hackers copied the data and that it could then appear on the Internet. However, this cannot be completely ruled out, which is why the book authors and business partners have been informed. The supervisory authorities have also been informed and criminal charges have been filed, the company spokeswoman reported.
The background to such hacker attacks is usually blackmail attempts. The companies are then asked to pay money to release the data. The managing director of the Munich publishing group, Matthias Setzler, told the newspaper that his company had not responded to the demand for a ransom. “We don’t negotiate with criminals,” he said.