District in Germany declared emergency due to cyberattack

District in Germany declared emergency due to cyberattack

In Germany, there have already been attacks on districts and municipalities, but so far none of them has declared a “disaster situation”.

The administration of the Anhalt-Bitterfeld district in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt has declared a state of emergency after a cyber attack on a computer network.

Due to the cyberattack that took place on July 6 this year, the administration was forced to almost completely suspend work for more than a week, as well as to declare an emergency regime in order to receive federal assistance that will allow the district to help citizens, restore computer systems and find the culprits of the attack.

“We are almost completely paralyzed – and will be paralyzed within the next week,” local officials said.

Representatives of the Federal Office for Information Technology Security (BSI) have already joined in the elimination of the consequences and are investigating the situation.

As the BSI spokesman noted, there have already been attacks on counties and municipalities in Germany, but so far none of them has declared a “disaster situation”.

Officials did not specify what kind of cyberattack took place, and it is also unknown whether the attackers demanded a ransom. According to them, the attack affected several servers, which were immediately shut down to avoid data leakage.

Currently, the police and BSI are trying to find out the source of the attack, as well as analyze the malware in order to neutralize it.

Catch up on more stories here

Follow us on Facebook here

Leave a Reply