The hackers attacked the German authorities and companies on a wide front – possibly Russia’s retaliation for tank deliveries. ZDFtoday clarifies the most important questions.
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has recorded a wide range of attacks on German authorities and companies since Wednesday. Asked by AFP on Thursday, a BSI spokesperson said the Federal Office is aware of “currently ongoing DDoS attacks against targets in Germany”. ZDFheute clarifies the most important questions:
What are these attacks?
The hackers carried out so-called “DDos attacks”. The servers are bombarded with so many requests that the system can no longer cope with the tasks. As a result, the websites of the relevant institutions cannot be reached and everyone who enters these sites receives an error message.
Who is affected by hacker attacks?
According to the BSI, websites from airports are particularly affected, and “individual targets in the financial industry” and websites of federal and state governments are also attacked. The Baden-Württemberg Interior Ministry also reported that since Wednesday evening, “DDoS attacks have been carried out on the websites of various German institutions across the country”, including the infrastructure and administration areas, as well as Baden-Württemberg’s website. Police force.”
What are the effects of the attacks so far?
“Some websites are currently unavailable,” a BSI spokesperson said. “There are currently no signs of any direct impact on the relevant service and, according to BSI, it is not expected if the usual protective measures are taken.” The spokesperson said that attacks on federal and state government websites “have so far been largely repelled” and “remain without serious effects”. The BSI “signed to critical infrastructure operators in the affected industries to take action to defend against and mitigate DDoS attacks”.
The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior said that the security measures taken were activated and closed around 19:30 on the advice of IT security as a precaution to prevent any possible harm. , the website polizei-bw.de is temporarily unavailable.”
LKA Baden-Württemberg carries out investigations into possible crimes in close consultation with the relevant departments. At this point “no statement can be made about the author of the attack”.
Who is behind the attacks?
A BSI spokesperson said the attacks were announced by the Russian hacker group Killnet. “Handelsblatt” reported on Wednesday that Killnet’s attacks served as retaliation for Germany’s announcement that it had delivered Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
However, BSI spokesperson AFP said that assigning a specific author to the cyberattacks is “particularly difficult for hacker collectives”. “They make a call to action, and then a lot of people join in. It’s hard to prove that authorship has been specifically assigned.”
Source: ZDF
I’m Ashley Robinson, a professional writer and journalist. I specialize in news writing and have been working for the past five years with News Unrolled. My main focus is on technology-related topics, though I also write about politics, healthcare, and business from time to time.
