Hackers Leak Berlin Passwords, Emergency Plans

The Rhysida hacker group published approximately 5.8 terabytes of data from the Berlin State Administration on the dark web after the Berlin Senate refused to pay a ransom of 30 Bitcoin, or approximately €2m ($2.3m). The criminals made more than 1.4 million data available, according to Spiegel.

The leaked data includes information on administrative offenses, tens of thousands of contracts, documents related to critical infrastructure, court documents, emergency plans, passwords and login credentials.

The German Federal Office for Information Security assumes that the attackers are acting solely for financial gain and are not linked to state or political actors. At the same time, it highlighted their complex, multi-stage method, which Microsoft has dubbed "TerminalFix".

Experts also supported the Senate's decision not to pay the ransom. Bianca Kastl of the Chaos Computer Club emphasized that the funding sources of such groups must be cut off, warning that they would otherwise continue their attacks.

IT security expert Christof Fischer added that the government is prohibited by law from making payments to extortionists, even though the publication of the data could have serious consequences.

(max)