Once again, the capital's critical infrastructure has become the target of an attack. Who is behind it and exactly what security gap made the attack possible is the subject of investigations in which the LKA Berlin and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) are involved. “We live in dangerous times,” said Wegner. It is not the first successful hacker attack on Berlin, but one of the few that succeeded. “Attacks on our networks are fended off almost every day.”
The Berlin state elections are apparently not in danger
Since last Friday, two large state authorities, the Senate Department for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and Environment and the Senate Department for Building and Housing, have no longer been accessible online. Because suspicious activity had been reported, they were isolated from the state network that connects the Berlin administrations. According to media reports, a network connection was no longer possible internally. We are working “hard” to get the administrations back online, said Wegner.
Only freely available open source data was downloaded by the intruder, said Wegner's State Secretary for Digitalization, Florian Hauer, on Wednesday. But the affected administrations are now de facto unable to work; among other things, according to authorities, the payment of housing benefit to 50,000 recipients could be delayed. The state electoral authority was also affected, where it is temporarily no longer possible to apply for postal voting documents online for the election on September 20th. Interior Senator Iris Spranger emphasized on Wednesday that the procedure was working smoothly again: “As things currently stand, the systems that are needed for the implementation and execution of the election are not affected.”
In fact, the situation is such that it is primarily the security measures after the attack that are leading to the authorities' current IT problems, and not the attack itself. The analyzes place such a heavy burden on the state network that the overall data flow is disrupted. It will probably take some time before the traffic administration and the construction administration are back online, but how long is still unclear.
On Monday, the Senate Chancellery, which is responsible for the state network and digitalization issues in the country, set up a crisis team and announced the incident. “We saw exactly what was there with us,” said Olaf Kroll-Peters, state representative for information security.
Data protection experts criticize the vulnerability of the country's digital infrastructure
The Berlin state network connects around 600 administrations and institutions. It is operated by the state's own IT service center (ITDZ), which was founded in its current form around 20 years ago. The state's declared digital policy goal is to bundle its entire IT administration there. But many areas still manage their own technology. This regularly leads to various problems, such as missed updates and security holes, which cause high costs.
Data protection experts have long criticized the vulnerability of the country's digital infrastructure. The two administrations concerned also run a common IT area independently, i.e. without involving the ITDZ. The Green digital politician Stefan Ziller says: “The isolation of individual IT points makes the state network as a whole vulnerable.”
But he also says: “If the ITDZ had a better reputation, the willingness to come under its roof would be greater.” With this, Zille is alluding to the problems surrounding the ITDZ that had recently increased. The institution had to be saved from insolvency several times. The main reason for this are conflicts over invoices that the Senate Chancellery repeatedly failed to pay on time. There are also allegations against ITDZ director Maria Borelli of breaking procurement law and awarding large contracts bypassing the supervisory board.
Staffing difficulties in the digital area of the Senate Chancellery have not recently contributed to improving the situation. While Kai Wegner's Chief Digital Officer Martina Klement made a name for herself in the area of administrative reform, the unpaid bills added up during her term of office. After Klement's move to the Brandenburg government, Matthias Hundt (CDU) took over the post and immediately publicly clashed with Borelli. However, Hundt had to leave just a few weeks after his appointment when it became public that several investigations were underway against him in his native Saxony. His successor Florian Hauer said on Wednesday that the causes would be investigated once the crisis was over. It is premature to talk about responsibilities and responsibilities.
In any case, network and server problems are not uncommon in the Berlin administration. Just a few weeks ago, the country's judiciary had to struggle with internet problems for days and courts had to save their documentation in Word files. The path to IT security, says Green Zille, lies in getting the ITDZ up and running now, “and putting all the necessary resources into it”. Next Monday, the incident will be discussed in the digital committee of the House of Representatives.
