Berlin, the capital city of Germany, on Friday said it would not pay the extortion group that hacked into its network and stole large amounts of data earlier this month.
The incident was discovered on August 14 and impacted the Senate Department for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection, and Environment.
To contain the attack, the department’s network was shut down on August 14, the same as was the Senate Department for Urban Development, Construction, and Housing’s network.
According to official statements from governing mayor Kai Wegner and the Senate Chancellery, the data exfiltration occurred between August 7 and 12, and likely involved personal and non-public information.
Berlin has not shared further information on the attack, citing the ongoing investigation carried out by the state criminal police, federal security agencies, and the public prosecutor’s office.
On Friday, Wegner and Senator for the Interior and Sport Iris Spranger confirmed that the hackers have demanded a ransom payment, but underlined that the city would not pay.
While the city has not named the threat actor behind the attack, the Rhysida ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the incident, briefly adding Berlin to its Tor-based leak site on August 28.
The group claimed the theft of over 5.7 terabytes of data, including complaints and legal documents, financial documents, contracts, human resources files, passwords, and confidential documents.
Rhysida said it stole the personal information of over 12,000 people, as well as over 16,000 email addresses and close to 12,000 phone numbers.
Payment information, including IBANs, plaintext credentials, lawsuit case files, payroll information, passport and ID information, leadership private data, and other data were also allegedly stolen.
The extortion group demanded a 30 bitcoin (~$2.3 million) ransom.
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