After Brandenburg, Berlin is also affected by cyber attacks affecting the websites of public authorities. The websites of the Berlin authorities are therefore slower to access, explained Ralf Kleindiek, State Secretary for Digital Affairs in the Berlin Senate Department for the Interior, on Wednesday to the RBB. The infrastructure is not affected, Kleindiek told the broadcaster. So no data was leaked or stolen. However, he spoke of the “biggest attack on the websites of the Berlin state administration”. “And this is part of an attack on all of Germany,” said the State Secretary.
For example, reports from the Berlin police could not be published on the Internet on Wednesday. In Brandenburg, the police side has been disturbed since Tuesday morning. Online services are still paralyzed, said a spokeswoman for Potsdam’s police headquarters on Wednesday.
It is probably a so-called DDoS attack, i.e. a targeted overload of attacked servers. The Brandenburg State Criminal Police Office is investigating suspected computer sabotage. Since other federal states are also affected, the police in Brandenburg are in exchange with the Federal Criminal Police Office, it said.
We’ve seen a lot of activity from Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. Whenever there are new aid packages, new statements from the West, it is usually accompanied by such attacks.
Christian Dörr, Professor of Cyber Security at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam
For example, the state portal of Schleswig-Holstein was not available on Wednesday, as the State Chancellery announced. There were also disruptions in Saarland. Hacker attacks on websites of ministries or police in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony were already known on Tuesday.
It is still unclear who is behind the attacks. Christian Dörr, professor of cyber security at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, told RBB: “We have seen a lot of activity from Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. Whenever there are new aid packages, new statements from the West, it is usually accompanied by such attacks. But it can also easily be someone playing a joke.” (dpa)
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