Criminals claimed to have stolen data from Destatis. The Federal Statistical Office found no evidence of data leakage.
Last week, cyber criminals offered 3.8 GB of data for sale in the digital underground, allegedly from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). The authority has now announced that no data has been leaked from the IDEV reporting system.
Destatis announces that security authorities and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) initiated investigations on November 13, directly following indications of an alleged data leak. “In comprehensive stress tests and data flow analyses by the BSI, no indications of security or data leaks were identified. The reporting system was therefore not affected by a hacker attack and no data from reporting companies or other reporting bodies was tapped in aggregated form,” explains the authority.
Companies must resume reporting
The Federal Statistical Office had taken the IDEV reporting system offline as a precautionary measure, as the allegedly captured data could have originated from it. In addition, all access passwords were reset. Destatis intends to contact the companies active in the IDEV system and ask them “to resume their reporting activities”. From Monday, November 25, the IDEV system should be accessible again for reporters. Reporting deadlines and reminder procedures have been extended or suspended for the duration of the unavailability and affected companies have already been informed.