Rostock (dpa/mv) - The online system of the Rostock Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) has been largely restored after a cyber attack. The chamber announced on Monday that the IHK employees had only been able to be reached to a very limited extent since August 3rd. "In a quickly set up crisis management team in Rostock, together with the entire IHK organization, which was also affected, we ensured that our ability to work was maintained despite the attack," said the chamber's general manager, Thorsten Ries.
The IT experts of the IHKs reacted consistently by taking all IT systems offline. "That fended off worse things," says Ries. After a comprehensive security check of the IT systems, it was guaranteed that recipients of e-mails from the IHK about Rostock could open and process them without hesitation.
According to the findings of the IT forensic experts and the Federal Office for Information Security, very professional hackers are behind the cyber attack. Their procedure indicates an attack for the purpose of espionage or sabotage, even if a financially motivated background to the attack cannot yet be ruled out, the IHK-GfI, the IT service provider of the IHK organization, announced in September. Because of the attack in early August, the company disconnected the IT systems of all 79 chambers of industry and commerce from the Internet.
