Landkreis Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Summary

Unauthorized casino advertisements appeared on the homepage of the local government’s website after they were discovered by a municipal council member. The administration stated that its internal network remained unaffected and that the site, hosted by an external provider, was being examined by the responsible company. Police were notified and a criminal complaint was filed under statutes concerning data espionage and property damage, while officials confirmed that citizen online services continued to operate normally. Investigations into how the content was inserted were ongoing, with no further systems reported as compromised.

Motives

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TTPs

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Description

On May 11, 2022, CSU‑Fraktionschef Rudolf Utzschneider noticed unusual content on the homepage of the Marktgemeinde Murnau, where a sentence about earning money was followed by advertisement encouraging visitors to try their luck together with a casino. He took screenshots, informed the municipal council, and urged immediate clarification of the incident. Utzschneider recommended that council members refrain from accessing any IT systems of the market town until the cause was known and requested that all meetings be suspended until the risk of accessing compromised systems could be assessed. He also filed a criminal complaint against unknown perpetrators citing sections 202 and 303 of the Strafgesetzbuch for data espionage and property damage.

Rathaussprecherin Annika Röttinger stated that the market town does not place any advertising on its websites or other online presences and confirmed that the municipality was investigating the matter. She said the company responsible for maintaining the market town’s web presence had been notified and was working on the issue. She added that initial checks indicated no other pages were affected. Röttinger also noted that the police had been informed and that, according to her assessment, the unauthorized access likely occurred during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. She emphasized that the internal network infrastructure of the municipality remained unaffected. She noted that the website is hosted on external servers while the internal systems were verified by the IT department and showed no irregularities. Furthermore, she confirmed that systems such as the citizen information portal and online services operate independently and were not impacted by the incident.

Röttinger pointed out that the market town places a high priority on IT security and operates under an information security concept aligned with the Bavarian E‑Government Act. She mentioned that the municipality holds the communal IT security seal awarded by the Landesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik. She concluded that the IT department regularly undergoes training to stay current with emerging threats.

Sources

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