Ayhan Simsek<\/p>\n
29 August 2026\u2022Update: 29 August 2026<\/p>\n
Hackers demanding 30 bitcoin, says media report<\/p>\n
Hackers who breached Berlin\u2019s government IT network have issued a ransom demand, threatening to release nearly 6 terabytes of data if payment is not made, German media reported Saturday.<\/p>\n
According to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, the ransomware group Rhysida claimed responsibility in a dark-web post and demanded 30 bitcoin \u2014 roughly 2 million euros ($2.3 million).<\/p>\n
The group warned it would publish the stolen data if the ransom was not paid, setting a countdown that left Berlin one week to meet the demand.<\/p>\n
Berlin’s city-state administration held an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the incident, according to public broadcaster RBB. \u201cThe State of Berlin has fallen victim to a serious crime,\u201d Governing Mayor Kai Wegner said after the meeting. \u201cBerlin will not allow itself to be blackmailed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
According to media reports, the ransomware group claims it seized materials including records from nearly 80,000 administrative fine proceedings, more than 46,500 contracts, information on critical infrastructure facilities, judicial documents, emergency plans, passwords, and nearly 6,000 files containing login credentials.<\/p>\n
Authorities determined that the hackers had been inside the network earlier than initially believed, with data exfiltration occurring \u201cat least since Aug. 7.\u201d<\/p>\n
The leak was first detected on Aug. 14 and, as a precaution, several ministries were temporarily disconnected from the network in mid-August while officials worked to contain the breach.<\/p>\n
The compromised system, known as BeLa, is a high-speed fiber-optic network that links hundreds of offices across Berlin\u2019s city-state administration. It is operated by the state IT service provider ITDZ Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayhan Simsek 29 August 2026\u2022Update: 29 August 2026 Hackers demanding 30 bitcoin, says media report Hackers who breached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,190,31849],"class_list":["post-155237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-germany","tag-sitekeywords"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117179115470831880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}