Companies and public institutions in Germany have also been affected by a large-scale global wave of cyberattacks using blackmail software. "According to the current state of knowledge, there appears to be a mid-three-digit number of people affected in Germany," the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) announced in Bonn on Monday in response to a dpa query. More concrete statements on the extent of the damage are not yet possible. The Italian cyber security authority ACN had already warned of the wave of attacks on Sunday and called on organizations to take measures to protect their systems.

The cyberattacks are aimed at users of a special virtualization solution from the manufacturer VMWare, so-called ESXi servers, which split a physical server into several virtual machines. According to the BSI, the regional focus of the attacks was on France, the USA, Germany and Canada. Other countries were also affected. In so-called ransomware attacks, the attackers penetrate the systems, take control and lock out the victims. As a rule, the data is encrypted and only made accessible again after a ransom has been paid.

According to the BSI, the vulnerability in the VMWare software was already closed in February 2021 by updating the program. At that time, the authority also warned against the exploitation of vulnerabilities in the corresponding product.

Rüdiger Trost, Head of Cyber Security Solutions at IT security company WithSecure, told dpa that around 84,000 servers with the affected software are installed worldwide, and around 7,000 in Germany. However, it is not possible to say which of these are still vulnerable. The expert pointed out that the security gap had already been discovered and closed some time ago. "Anyone who is still a victim should check their protective measures."

A special feature of the current case is that the attack is not directed against Windows software, but against a solution that runs on the Linux operating system. "Many people mistakenly think that Linux ransomware doesn't exist and fail to take appropriate protective measures," said Trost.