The head of Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Claudia Plattner, described the current cyber‑attack on the national railway as an unusually large‑scale incident. The assault involved billions of requests per minute, a figure she said “clearly represents the tip of the iceberg, not just a routine attack”.
Plattner did not confirm any specific perpetrators, but she noted that the number of cyber‑attacks on German systems has risen since the war with Ukraine began. She warned that the goal of such attacks is to spread propaganda and deliver a chilling message that “we can strike you at any time” or target your systems.
According to Plattner, the railway’s infrastructure and Germany overall are well positioned to counter these threats. She underlined that the country is not defenseless and that the authorities are coordinating closely with the railway’s IT teams. The incident was a classic denial‑of‑service (DoS) attack, which overwhelms IT systems with an overwhelming volume of traffic and temporarily disables them – at least some servers were knocked offline in this case.
The BSI director believes the attack will not cause lasting damage, though it will induce a serious but temporary restriction on everyday services.
The railway had earlier announced in the morning that cyber‑attacks were behind the recent disruptions of its information and booking systems. Since then the issues have been resolved, although the DB Navigator app and the railway’s website remained affected from the previous afternoon.
