Cyber attacks have paralyzed the websites of public authorities in several German federal states. In Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the websites of the ministries were temporarily unavailable on Tuesday, and in Lower Saxony the websites of the police were affected.
Hackers also tried again to disrupt a new platform of the German Federal Development Ministry for reconstruction in Ukraine. A connection between the cyber attacks in the federal states and the incidents at the development ministry, which have already been reported to the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has not yet been assumed.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the websites of the ministries and subordinate authorities were temporarily unavailable, as the Ministry for Infrastructure and Digital announced. It was a so-called DDoS attack – the servers were deliberately overloaded. The attack was “apparently part of a Germany-wide campaign,” the ministry said.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, too, the websites of the ministries were temporarily unavailable. The public homepage of the state police was also affected, as Interior and Digitization Minister Christian Pengel (SPD) said. “Our experts are working flat out to clarify what is happening and to prevent further waves of attacks,” said the minister.
The attack in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also consisted of overloading servers with mass requests. According to the computer emergency team CERT MV, a Russian cyber group has claimed responsibility for the attack on social media channels.
A spokesman for the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior said on Tuesday evening that due to a load attack on the server, selected websites of the Lower Saxony police had been temporarily unavailable since the morning. Communication with the police departments and the availability of the Lower Saxony online police station were not affected, nor were there any effects on internal police IT systems.
According to a spokeswoman, the attacks on the Ukraine platform of the development ministry have so far been repelled. The platform, which includes a central website, is intended to be a point of contact for anyone who wants to get involved in the reconstruction. It is intended to network aid organizations, companies and initiatives. The platform has been repeatedly attacked since it was launched at the beginning of last week, the spokeswoman said. There was a peak shortly after the start and again on Tuesday.
The “Spiegel” had previously reported on the “pro-Russian cyber attacks”, in which servers are flooded with an artificially generated mass of calls until they collapse under the load.