Cyber Incident Victim: Landkreis München-Land
Date:
Feb 2025
Location:
Germany
Summary
A cyberattack disrupted the websites of the Munich district administration office and the city of Garching, causing prolonged outages and intermittent accessibility. The incident involved a DDoS attack that overwhelmed servers with excessive requests, rendering both sites unreachable for extended periods. A shared technical service provider implemented temporary redirects for Garching's site while working to resolve the issue, though restoration remained inconsistent across network providers for the district's platform.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 0 motives | 1 technique |
| Threat Actors | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0 actors | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
On February 13, 2025, the city of Garching experienced a cyberattack targeting its municipal homepage (www.garching.de), rendering the website inaccessible throughout the morning and into the evening. The attack was identified as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) incident, where attackers overwhelmed the server with excessive traffic volumes that exceeded its processing capacity. Municipal authorities confirmed the intentional disruption caused by coordinated malicious requests that forced service failure. By evening, the city's technical service provider implemented an interim solution redirecting users to a functional version of the homepage when accessing the original URL. No data breach or secondary attack vectors were reported in this initial incident, though the disruption persisted for approximately 12 hours before partial restoration.
The following day (February 14), the Munich County administration (Landkreis München-Land) reported related disruptions affecting its official website (www.landkreis-muenchen.de), with intermittent outages occurring since February 13. The county's press office confirmed the issues stemmed from a cyberattack impacting the same technical service provider responsible for both Garching's and the county's web infrastructure. Accessibility fluctuated depending on users' internet service providers, indicating unresolved backend instability. Technical teams worked continuously to restore full functionality, though complete resolution remained pending as of the morning of February 14. Both entities maintained reliance on their shared external provider for incident response, with no independent containment measures or forensic findings disclosed by municipal or county authorities during the reporting period.