The Funke media group claimed to have been the victim of a hacker attack on Tuesday. “This affects numerous systems nationwide,” said a spokesman for the dpa. “We are working flat out on the solution.” The Essen police determined, as they confirmed on request. At the public prosecutor’s office, the cybercrime central and contact point (ZAC) took over the procedure, as a spokesman said.

According to the ZAC, systems were used at the media company encrypted from the outside. It is still unclear whether it is blackmail. “The situation is very dynamic.” The Süddeutsche Zeitung, however, speaks of a ransom demand. According to information from the newspaper, the media group’s computers are said to have been infected with a Trojan from the Doppelpaymer family. In September, malware of this type also attacked the computers of the Düsseldorf University Link.

Newspapers in emergency issue The publisher’s computer systems throughout Germany are affected by the attack, including “our editorial offices and printing houses,” as the media group announced. The newspapers – including the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Hamburger Abendblatt and the Berliner Morgenpost – “can unfortunately only appear with an emergency issue on Wednesday”. Paywalls have been deactivated on the publisher’s website, readers can download e-paper versions for free.

“The attack on our systems continues,” it continues. “All teams are working flat out to solve and eliminate the problem.” According to the public prosecutor’s office, the Essen police have set up a special organizational structure (BAO) and are investigating with specialists from the State Criminal Police Office on site.

In May 2019 after the infection of a workstation computer with Emotet, there was a massive infection of computers at Heise Verlag and Heise Gruppe (Heise Medien, to which c’t and heise online belong, were not affected ). In spite of quick countermeasures, there was considerable property damage. (With material from dpa)

(vbr)