October 5, 2023
The utilities HochsauerlandWasser and HochsauerlandEnergie were hit by a hacker attack. Customer service “out of operation” for several days. The monthly payments for drinking water, electricity and natural gas deliveries due in October will be collected at a later date.
Neither the supply of drinking water nor the supply of electricity and gas were affected or endangered by the hacker attack at any time.
October 30, 2023
The municipal service provider Südwestfalen IT (SIT) said it was hit by a ransomware attack on the night from Sunday to Monday (October 30). In order to contain the attack, all connections to the data center were severed. This affects 72 member municipalities in South Westphalia. As the regional newspaper Sauerland Kurier reports, it is assumed in the Hochsauerland district that the IT failure will last several days. Most administrations can only be reached by telephone because email traffic is also affected, the report says.
October 30, 2023
The Bavaria-based civil engineering specialist, Bauer Group, was the victim of a cyber attack. Various systems were shut down or switched off as a precautionary measure. The websites were still down on Wednesday. This results in restrictions for the business partners of Bauer companies worldwide.
Update 10 Nov:
Following the attack on the IT infrastructure, the Group’s business can continue in most areas, even with restrictions in one place or another. “Our construction sites in the Geotechnical Solutions and Resources segments are continuing to operate, we can also deliver equipment and Sales and Materials Management can also continue to work. To this end, we have switched many digital processes back to manual processes over the past week. Our solvency has also not been affected by the attack,” says Peter Hingott, Executive Board member of BAUER AG.
However, as there are individual areas of the company that are severely restricted, such as machine production and associated teams, the response in these areas is to reduce working hours and bring forward vacations. There are also plans to use short-time working for these areas where necessary. “What we have achieved in the last two weeks is a great achievement.” “We continue to ask our business partners for understanding and patience if there are currently delays or problems in our cooperation,” says Peter Hingott.
March 28, 2023
The Russian hacker group has today targeted the German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall with a DDoS attack. Rheinmetall’s website was briefly unavailable on the morning of 28 March. Access was later restored.
Rheinmetall is expected to provide Ukraine with ammunition and weapons, such as tanks, which prompted the Russia-affiliated hackers to target the company.
February 17, 2022
In February 2022, Kracht GmbH was attacked by unknown perpetrators, and important systems were brought to a halt. Systems were up and running again in seven days. The entire IT system was reorganized so the workforce could quickly return to day-to-day business.
“It was a worst case scenario, as unknown offenders managed to override our sophisticated security systems. We decided not to negotiate with the offenders.” states Peter Schilg, Head of IT, Kracht GmbH
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February 20, 2023
Dürr’s security experts were able to fend off a hacker attack. The subsidiary was also attacked. The attempt to break into the IT system of the Bietigheim-Bissingen mechanical engineering company was repelled. The hackers neither encrypted any data nor took control of the system. The employees at Dürr were informed about the attack. Everyone had to change their password.
There was also a hacker attack at an American company in the Homag Group, which belongs to Dürr AG, says Christen. The attackers got a little further in the company than in Bietigheim-Bissingen. The spokesman emphasizes that data was not lost there either. To prevent this, the computer systems were shut down. IT security checks are currently ongoing. (see cross link to Stiles Machinery)
July 21, 2023
SoftProject GmbH was the target of a ransomware attack on its data center. According to available findings, part of SoftProject GmbH’s application landscape was encrypted. The forensic audits to date have revealed no evidence of a data leak. The detected malware “CryTox” is only used for encryption. The office domain of SoftProject GmbH’s administrative location was not part of the attack. According to current knowledge, there was no data leakage here either. SoftProject GmbH is working on putting the systems back into operation and carrying out further forensic analyses.
The incident was immediately and properly reported. SoftProject offers products and services for digitizing and automating business processes in all industries
July 14, 2023
Hackers paralyzed Wildeboer’s IT on July 14 and encrypted the company data. Production has been at a standstill since then, and a large proportion of the 350 employees have been on short-time work since. The company produces, among other things, fire and sound insulation components for office complexes and stadiums. The perpetrators left instructions, however instead of responding to the ransom demand, the company filed a police report.
The company issued a statement on their website: “After weeks of hard work, Wildeboer will resume production on Monday, August 14. In connection with the restart of production, we will provide you very promptly with the necessary documents from our order processing department. The restart was made possible by many very intensive and dedicated colleagues from all divisions. “
July 28, 2023
Hackers have paralyzed the IT systems of the Stader Land Drinking Water Association (TWV) resulting in technical disruptions. The company website states (translated in EN): At the end of July we fell victim to a ransomware attack. The aim of this was to encrypt our systems. The encryption could be prevented and we have now largely completed the secure reconstruction of our IT. We are supported by external experts and work closely with the relevant data protection and police authorities. The drinking water supply was never affected by the IT security incident and is operating at the usual high level.
With an attack of this type, there is always a risk that the perpetrators will steal data such as address or account details and other sensitive information. Unfortunately, this is now also the case with us. The criminals stole customer data in the context of meter changes and, according to our experts, published it on the darknet. A large number of our customers are affected by this.
February 9, 2023
Almost exactly a year after the first attack, the service group Wisag fell victim to hackers again. On Tuesday morning, the IT department found “irregularities” on the servers, said a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt-based company. As a result, all systems and applications were immediately taken off the network.
“At the current time, it is not apparent that customer or internal data has leaked,” it continues. “We are optimistic that we can safely put all systems back into operation as soon as possible.”