Cyber attacks are rising and hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated and this led Interior Ministry and North Rhine-Westphalia Police to work together and set up a defense against cyber criminals. The World Wide problem causes a loss in billions of dollars to peoples, governments, and companies.
The Interior Ministry hired 36 security professionals to strengthen the cyber competence center at the state criminal authority. It now opens up a whole new IT Position in 16 crime centers across the country.
One such incident back in 2012 would be the servers of numerous german shops gets paralyzed by malicious software remotely controlled by the attackers who managed to steal money from the victim’s company.
For compensation of the credentials, he demanded bitcoins and threatened further attacks which already cost around double million dollars.
The Hacker responsible for the attack was finally tracked down by LKA Investigators after 3 years and was handcuffed at Ukraine.
Germany’s alert level against cyber attacks has now been raised to “heightened readiness” as the country prepares for its parliamentary elections.
The Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported that government websites are already the target of daily assaults, which are expected to increase significantly during the elections.
“We need laws that allow us to take side scores because of criminal content, which we will get, and we need the manpower to find such content as comprehensively as possible,” declared Jäger. “This applies to right-wing propaganda as well as to Islamic propaganda.” Two Islamic scientists will also support the cyber investigation and search center. In this newly created centerpiece of the Competence Center, highly specialized teams are investigating and investigating particularly complex and extensive cases. And they are looking for weapons and drugs in the shadow internet, the so-called Darknet, used mainly for criminal purposes.
NRW was the first country to set up a special unit against Cybercrime five years ago. Many other countries and the Federal Criminal Police Office have followed this example.
“The new department and the research center underline that the fight against cybercrime still has top priority with the state government,” the minister underlined.
In December, last year, Germany faced a large cyber attack, which targeted Deutsche Telekom, one of the biggest internet, phone, and cable service provider in the country.The impact of the attack resulted in 900,000 victims left without cable, phone, and internet service.
But on February 22, 2017, in a joint operation by local police, British and Cypriot law enforcement agencies with help from Europol and Eurojust, investigators arrested a 29-year-old suspect at the Luton airport in London.
The Hacker goes by the name of ‘BestBuy’ was the person responsible for Deutsche Telekom attack.