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🇩🇪 Germany /Conflict & Security

Berlin Senate Faces Mounting Criticism Over Hacker Attack Response

From Die Zeit · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Berlin opposition parties criticized the Senate’s handling of a cyberattack on parts of the city administration’s network, with the FDP calling for the governing mayor and interior senator to resign.
  • The Chaos Computer Club called for full transparency and questioned why access was not immediately blocked after leaked credentials appeared online.
  • The Senate said no data important to national security had been stolen, but reviews of more than 1.2 million files were still underway.

Criticism of Berlin’s crisis management intensified after a hacker attack on parts of the city administration’s network. The Left and Greens want the state parliament to debate what they called a failure in administrative IT security and “miserable crisis management.”

The Berlin FDP went further, demanding the resignation of Governing Mayor Kai Wegner of the CDU and Interior Senator Iris Spranger of the SPD, two weeks before the regular election. “Both have failed. Investigation and resignations are not mutually exclusive, they are two sides of the same political responsibility,” the party said.

Both have failed. Investigation and resignations are not mutually exclusive, they are two sides of the same political responsibility.

· Berlin FDPThe party demanded the resignations of Governing Mayor Kai Wegner and Interior Senator Iris Spranger.

The Chaos Computer Club also called for a transparent investigation. “What we need above all now is maximum transparency in the investigation,” said the organization’s spokesman, Joachim Selzer. He said officials should publicly explain exactly what went wrong.

What we need above all now is maximum transparency in the investigation.

· Joachim SelzerThe Chaos Computer Club spokesman called for public disclosure of what went wrong.

Selzer also criticized the handling of stolen data. He said preliminary portions of the data appeared online two weeks earlier, and that people testing the published systems could still access them days later using the exposed passwords. “Why were all access points not blocked immediately after these initial leaks became known?” he asked.

The attack became known on August 14. The Rhysida hacker group demanded 30 bitcoin, worth about 2 million euros, but the Senate refused to pay. The criminals then published the data after their deadline expired. Digital State Secretary Florian Hauer told the Interior Committee that the stolen information had the lowest of four secrecy classifications and did not include data important to national security. He added that examinations of more than 1.2 million files had not yet finished.

Why were all access points not blocked immediately after these initial leaks became known?

· Joachim SelzerHe questioned the continued accessibility of systems after exposed passwords appeared online.
About this summary

Originally published by Die Zeit in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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