Germany says threat to its cyberspace is 'higher than ever'

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) - The threat to Germany’s cyberspace is “higher than ever,” the country’s interior minister said on Thursday.

During the presentation of the German Interior Ministry's Situation Report 2023 in Berlin on Thursday, which was broadcast via livestream, Nancy Faeser said the situation is "tense to critical" and in some cases "worrying."

Due to the ongoing digitalization and increasing networking in all areas, such as society, the economy and also the state, the attack surfaces, some of which already exist, are becoming even larger, Faeser said.

The threat situation has grown in particular for software products, i.e. computer programs or cell phone apps.

The ministry is registering "more and more vulnerabilities" there, and the potential damage is increasing accordingly.

These security vulnerabilities are often the first gateway for cybercriminals to infiltrate networks with malware, Faeser said.

"Small and medium-sized enterprises and especially local governments and municipal enterprises were disproportionately attacked," she added.

In addition, the attacks were increasingly difficult to recognize as such, according to the minister. The biggest threat is and remains "ransomware," Faeser added.

In the 2022 situation report, the ministry had already warned of digital extortion attempts, in which attackers infiltrate networks to first tap data and then encrypt it. They then demand a ransom from victims for decryption.

According to the 2023 situation report, the Interior Ministry is now also paying special attention to artificial intelligence.

According to Faeser, even the requests that users feed into an AI's data set could pose a threat.

So-called "deep fakes," manipulated images, videos and voices, would also gain in quality. For laypersons, for example, it is hardly possible to distinguish the AI-generated voice of a politician from the original, the minister explained.

According to the ministry, the increasing real-time capability of these manipulations will already ensure in the "foreseeable future" that in online meetings you can no longer be sure whether you are talking to the real person or not.

In the situation report, the war in Ukraine was one of the central topics.

According to the ministry, a number of pro-Russian hacker attacks are still occurring in this context, primarily targeting the availability of internet services and crippling them by their sheer mass.

However, according to the ministry, the registered attacks have so far caused little to no lasting damage.