Unknowns temporarily paralyzed the website of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) last Thursday. The attack was in the morning between 8 00 and 10. 00 o’clock, said a spokesman for the Federal Information Technology Center (ITZBund). He thus confirmed a corresponding report by the news magazine Spiegel. It was a so-called DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service).

In DDoS attacks, servers are brought to their knees with a flood of senseless requests. So attacks can be carried out on a large scale. According to the ITZBund, who is behind the attack is not yet known and is still being investigated. The state IT service provider operates the RKI website.

Corona app not affected The RKI is the German higher federal authority for infectious diseases and has been in place for months in the context of the corona pandemic in the public eye. The so-called dashboard, in which current figures on pandemic events are collected and displayed, was not affected by the attack as it is hosted on a different server. Functions of the Corona warning app were also not affected by the attack. The attackers also did not penetrate the RKI network.

In order to disrupt a website with a DDoS attack, hardly any technical knowledge is required. Cyber ​​criminals are now offering these attacks as a rental service. They rely on botnets that are controlled by them. Bot networks consist of computers and IoT devices that have been hijacked with Trojans or other malware. The unsuspecting owners of these computers are usually not aware that their computers are being misused for such attacks.

Arson attack on the weekend The Berliners Police were not involved after the cyber attack. The institute has not filed a criminal complaint, said a spokeswoman for the police on Wednesday.

The institute has also become a target offline: At the weekend, Unbeka