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When calling up the website of the State Criminal Police Office of Baden-Württemberg, an error message appeared on Thursday
Photo: Bernd Weissbrod / dpa
Hacktivists from the Killnet group apparently tried to paralyze the websites of various German authorities and companies.
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) announced on Thursday that they were aware of "currently ongoing DDoS attacks against targets in Germany," as a spokesman for the authority said when asked by AFP.
DDoS attacks are technically relatively trivial overload attacks that temporarily paralyze websites.
However, no data is stolen and no permanent damage is left behind.
In the current case, websites of airports and "individual targets in the financial sector" as well as websites of the federal and state administration were attacked, according to the BSI.
The attacks were announced by the Russian hacker group Killnet, said the spokesman for the authorities.
On Telegram, the hackers had previously spoken under the hashtag GermanyRIP (English: Germany, rest in peace) of wanting to retaliate with their attacks for Germany's announced delivery of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
There the group also spoke of having attacked the website of the Federal Intelligence Service or the online presence of Annalena Baerbock with DDoS attacks.
Killnet is a group of hacktivists loyal to Putin who have tried in the past to paralyze German official websites.
Apparently there was no permanent damage at the time.
Concrete assignment difficult
The BSI spokesman said it was "particularly difficult to determine who exactly is behind the current attacks with hacker collectives".
"They call for action and then a lot of people take part." The attacks on websites of federal and state administrations have so far been largely repelled and have had no serious effects, according to the BSI.
The Ministry of the Interior in Baden-Württemberg also stated that "DDoS attacks have been taking place nationwide on various German websites and institutions" since Wednesday evening.
This included the areas of infrastructure and administration, as well as the website of the Baden-Württemberg police force.
"The security measures installed have taken effect, and as a precautionary measure, the server was shut down around 7:30 p.m. on the advice of IT security to avoid possible damage," the ministry continued.
"Since then, the website polizei-bw.de has been temporarily unavailable." The Baden-Württemberg State Criminal Police Office is conducting investigations into the possible crimes in close consultation with the departments concerned.
ani/hpp/AFP/dpa
