German govt confirms series of cyber attacks

The German government has confirmed a series of cyber attacks on government bodies and ministries in recent days, reported dpa.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maximilian Kall said on Monday that the attacks had been successfully repelled and had not caused any permanent damage. No data had been leaked, he added.

In so-called DDoS attacks ("Distributed Denial of Service"), attackers try to paralyse servers with a flood of requests.

The ministry spokesman said that since the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine, the federal authorities had "not been able to detect any major cyberattacks."

According to news magazine Der Spiegel, the attacks were directed against the Defence Ministry, the Bundestag, federal police and several state police authorities.

The website of Chancellor Olaf Scholz was reportedly also affected.

Also the Russian hacker group "Killnet" claimed responsibility via the messenger service Telegram.