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Cyber attack in Ellwangen: Former student in the sights of the police!
An underage former student from Ellwangen is held responsible for a cyber attack on the city administration.
Cyber attack in Ellwangen: Former student in the sights of the police!
In Ellwangen, a town in the Ostalb district, a former student at a local school caused a serious cyber attack on the city administration. As the city administration announced, the suspect, who acted as a lone perpetrator, gained access to the city's networks, including the school network. This incident became public through reporting by SWR, which also went into the details of the investigation, which was driven forward by IT experts and the police.
The irregularities in the IT systems were first discovered at the end of April. Suspicious systems were immediately shut down and a crisis team was formed to deal with the situation. The cyberattack caused significant disruption in various areas of the city's administration, particularly in the applications used for communication between schools and parents. According to K-A News, some systems are not yet fully available today.
Response to the attack
After the attack was discovered, the city administration took rapid security measures. IT specialists are continuously working on redesigning around 200 servers that are part of the administration and the school network. However, the use of digital boards and other teaching devices in schools is still guaranteed. Teachers' and students' email accounts will be reset after the Whitsun holidays, while all user accounts will be revised by then.
The city administration remains available to citizens both by email and by telephone. There is currently no evidence that citizens' personal data was leaked, which is positive news given the severity of the attack. According to the investigation, there were no attempts at blackmail in connection with the incident, which defuses the situation somewhat. Nevertheless, all necessary measures were taken into account in accordance with the BSI's recommendations to combat cyber attacks. These include an individual adaptation of the security strategies and a precise analysis of the IT infrastructure affected in each case in order to counteract future incidents (BSI).
Overall, the incident in Ellwangen shows how vulnerable even smaller city administrations are to cyber threats. The key question for those responsible remains how such an incident can be prevented in the future.