The German digital, electricity and gas networks are in the sights of foreign secret services! According to information from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), intelligence services and other possible saboteurs are systematically searching the Internet for information about our energy networks.
This is reported by the Southgerman newspaper“, citing a “safety notice for the economy” from the Federal Office, which is available to the newspaper.
︎ In order not to provide any indications of possible attack targets, according to the BfV, companies, authorities and industry associations should no longer put so much data, maps and construction plans online.
The “security notice for the economy” states: Publications that are freely available on the Internet often offer very detailed information. This applies, for example, to presentations that were originally aimed at authorities and market participants, but also to maps showing the locations of systems or routes. In this way, “weak points and thus starting points to carry out physical and cyber-based acts of sabotage can be identified,” the constitutional protection officers warn.
And: Even worse is that companies also put detailed instructions for crises on the Internet. This gave secret services and terrorist groups the opportunity to “interrupt or at least disrupt the emergency procedures” after an attack.
There is also criticism of the legal transparency obligations for companies, which would have to be completely reconsidered due to the Ukraine war and other new threats. For example, Deutsche Telekom no longer wants to supply some of the data required for the so-called infrastructure atlas, a kind of digital map of Germany.
The responsible Federal Network Agency rejected the criticism and stated that the “tension” between the information needs of the market players and the public as well as the need for secrecy is regularly checked and reassessed.
The background to the debate is also the attack on two fiber optic cable shafts of Deutsche Bahn in October last year, with which previously unknown perpetrators largely paralyzed train traffic throughout northern Germany for hours. The case caused a stir in security circles, mainly because not only a cable in Berlin, but also the replacement line in Herne, 500 kilometers away, had been severed. The perpetrator or perpetrators must therefore have had a great deal of insider knowledge.
(bw)