Over the past few days, several Bavarian authorities and municipalities have fallen victim to coordinated cyber attacks. One of our customers was affected by the website of the city of Garching, which was temporarily unavailable due to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Attack on the website of the city of Garching
On Thursday morning, 13 February 2025, from around 7:00 a.m., the official website of the city of Garching, www.garching.de, was the target of a DDoS attack. The attackers flooded the server with an extremely high number of requests, causing it to become overloaded and unresponsive. As a result, the website was unavailable to citizens for hours.
Thanks to the rapid response of EGOTEC AG, the technical service provider for the city of Garching, the site was quickly brought back online. EGOTEC AG implemented measures to filter traffic and stabilise the server infrastructure in order to minimise further disruption.
On the following Sunday, 16 February 2025, there was another DDoS attack on the website. This attack began at 7:00 a.m., but was repelled within the first hour thanks to the security precautions already taken. The website was therefore available again relatively quickly.
Despite the lack of Support24/7, EGOTEC AG took action on Sunday and was able to successfully fend off the attack. In order to be able to react even faster in future cases, we recommend taking out a Support24/7 contract. Our support or sales team can be contacted for this purpose.
Connection with other cyber attacks
These attacks on the city of Garching are part of a series of cyberattacks on Bavarian authorities and institutions. According to information from Bayerischer Rundfunk("Prorussian" cyberattack on state government and police), there were hours of cyberattacks on the websites of the Bavarian state government and the police before the start of the Munich Security Conference. The State Office for Information Security (LSI) speaks of "prorussian hacktivism" as the cause of these attacks.
The websites of the Munich District Office were also affected by the attacks. The exact background and possible links between the attacks on municipal websites and those on state institutions are currently being investigated by the relevant authorities.
Measures and outlook
The city of Garching and EGOTEC AG are working intensively to further strengthen their IT infrastructure and ward off future attacks. Measures have already been implemented to improve security, including increased DDoS protection and extended monitoring mechanisms to detect attacks at an early stage.
Citizens are asked to be vigilant when using online services and to report suspicious activity immediately. Recent events emphasise the need for increased awareness of cyber threats and a proactive approach to IT security at all levels.