Hackers knock out almost 1 million routers in Germany

A huge hacker attack knocked out internet, phone and television routers in Germany from Sunday to Monday.

Published: November 29, 2016, 9:14 am

    While occasional interferences are common for telecommunications providers, such massive outages are rare.

    Around 900 000 routers across Germany were hit by the outage which started on Sunday, a company spokesman told DPA on Monday.

    A spokesperson for German Telekom said IT analysts found connection problems that may have been due to an outside attack rather than a normal system failure.

    “We have found the first indications that we were possibly victims of a hacker attack,” a spokesman said, as it appears not to have been damaged cables, which often happens during construction work, impacting on entire regions may be left disconnected.

    The company introduced new software on Monday morning to remedy the problem. Telekom customers were advised to unplug their routers to reset the software update. The outage affected only certain types of routers.

    Government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters that official computers were not affected by the apparent hack.

    “What this incident shows is how important and right the attention is that the German government, especially the Interior Ministry, have put on exactly this topic of cybersecurity and securing our infrastructure in the digital realm,” Seibert said Monday.

    On Tuesday, and Cologne’s Express newspaper obtained a copy of police recommendations to increase video surveillance ahead of New Year’s Eve. It is not known if the hack attack is related to the new recommendations.

    One of the problems for investigating the sex crimes in Cologne was that the security camera footage around the train station were of poor quality. Authorities want to ramp up electronic surveillance to stop sexual assaults, they say.

    In September, several political parties were targeted with fake emails purporting to be from NATO headquarters containing a link which installed spying software. Hackers also targeted the Bundestag in a 2015 attack.

    karin@praag.org

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