The technical issues have since been resolved, and the cybercrime division of the Nuremberg police has launched an investigation.
City Website Paralyzed by Hackers
Starting around 8 a.m. Friday morning, the City of Nuremberg’s websites came under a heavy cyberattack. Access to online services remained limited throughout the afternoon. By Saturday morning, the city announced that the problems had been fixed, confirming that their servers had been subjected to an intense wave of attacks.
Interactive Services Hit Hardest
The attack particularly impacted interactive features such as the search function and online contact forms. According to the city, the attack specifically targeted the web servers, while the internal IT infrastructure remained unaffected.
DDOS Attack Overwhelms Servers
City IT experts believe the attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, where a flood of traffic overwhelmed the servers, causing outages. They described the force of the attack as extremely strong.
Cybercrime Experts Investigate
The attack involved waves of traffic from numerous external sources, leading to fluctuating website availability. It remains unclear who is behind the attack, and tracking the perpetrators is notoriously difficult. Cybercrime specialists from the Nuremberg police have taken over the investigation.
