Despite the ongoing hacker attack on the Funke media group, most of the group’s daily newspapers can appear again on this Monday in larger volumes. A spokeswoman announced on Sunday. In North Rhine-Westphalia 24 pages are planned instead of the eight-page emergency issue on the day after the attack. In many other locations there are 20 pages. The Funke editors-in-chief Christine Richter would address the reader directly on the subject in the Monday issues.

‘Quarantine lock’ for new, clean IT infrastructure According to the spokeswoman, dozens of colleagues worked over Christmas to restore the IT systems. The aim is to gradually bring them to a new, “clean” infrastructure. “In view of the numerous nationwide Funke locations and potentially infected computers via 6000, this is a complicated and time-consuming process that demands a lot from all of us,” she explained.

Several rooms in the corporate headquarters have been converted into a “digital car wash”. It works like a lock or a quarantine network that every contaminated device has to go through. “At the same time, we are building a secure, new IT environment to restart our journalistic and business work.”

Newspaper pages built by hand Funke was the victim of a serious external hacker attack on Tuesday, according to the editor-in-chief of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung ( WAZ), Andreas Tyrock, writes to the readers (Monday). The attack by ransomware continues unabated. “The newspaper pages are built by hand in many places in the home office. All texts and headlines are coordinated word for word in telephone calls between the media designers and the editorial team, and photos are very laboriously incorporated,” he explains.

It is similarly complicated in the printing works. Tyrock thanks the staff and the readers. “There were almost no complaints – on the contrary, very many of you turned to us and supported us, encouraged us.” For the time being, paid content is actually freely accessible on the Internet behind the paywall.

(tiw)