Cyber ​​crime: Industry warns of increasing hacker attacks on German companies

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Crime on the laptop (symbolic image)

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In the pandemic, companies are an easier target for hackers than before: "Never before has the German economy been attacked as severely as it is today," said the head of the security department at BDI, Matthias Wachter, of "Welt am Sonntag".

"The number of attacks in the corona pandemic continued to rise because companies working from home are even more vulnerable." Representatives of security authorities and associations confirm the development.

"The threat situation is still very tense and has been exacerbated by the pandemic," according to the report at the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

"Cyber ​​attacks with blackmail software play a major role here." Particularly in the case of hacker attacks with the aim of releasing blocked computer systems only after paying a ransom, an "increased aggressiveness" can be observed.

The industry considers the defensive measures of the federal government and its support for the economy to be insufficient.

A concept drawn up by the BDI for a “national economic protection strategy” stipulates that politics and business should cooperate closely, as the “Welt am Sonntag” reported on.

In addition, the federal government should appoint a "coordinator for economic protection" with the rank of state minister or state secretary.

In addition, a national economic protection center should be set up as a public-private partnership, which acts as an interface between security authorities and companies, demands the BDI.

800 supermarket branches had to close

Only on Friday there was a cyber attack on the IT company Kaseya from the USA. The software from Kaseya had been manipulated by blackmail software "to encrypt more than a thousand companies," said the security company Huntress. Kaseya said 40 customers were affected. However, these included service providers who in turn have several customers. The Swedish supermarket chain Coop, which had to temporarily close 800 branches because the tills no longer worked, was also affected.

US President Joe Biden ordered the intelligence services to investigate the attack.

"The first impression was that the Russian government was not behind it - but we are not sure yet," said Biden on Saturday.

IT security experts assigned the attack to the REvil hacker group, which is located in Russia, using the software code.

A few weeks ago, REvil was behind the attack on the world's largest meat company JBS, which had to close several plants for days.

At their meeting in Geneva in June, Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin not to tolerate any activities by hacker groups and threatened the consequences of further attacks.

Attacks with extortion software had recently made repeated headlines.

Just before the JBS case, an attack of this type halted the operation of one of the largest gasoline pipelines in the United States and temporarily cut fuel supplies in the country.

The attacks put money into the hackers' pockets: JBS paid the attackers the equivalent of eleven million dollars in cryptocurrencies, the pipeline operator Colonial paid 4.4 million dollars.

However, a little later, investigators were able to confiscate a good half of the colonial ransom.

It is also the second attack within a few months in which hackers were able to penetrate the systems of its customers via an IT service provider.

Using maintenance software from Solarwinds, attackers were believed to have entered the computer networks of US government agencies, including those of the Department of Finance and Energy, for espionage purposes.

kha / AFP / dpa