The security of private internet users is increasing year on year
Every single day, Germany and Europe’s IT systems and their users are attacked. Often openly and easily detected. More often, however, they go unnoticed because they are hidden. The majority of these attacks come to nothing. They are detected and prevented early on by security systems, unmasked by clever people and thus nipped in the bud. Nevertheless, 6 out of 10 internet users were victims of cybercrime last year, as Bitkom found out in a representative survey. The crimes ranged from espionage and fraud to harassment and threats. On a positive note: Due to increasing awareness, the number of victims has been falling for three years – at least in the private sphere. However, the news behind this positive trend is something else. In the past, hackers targeted a large number of private individuals and supposedly small, easy prey that adds up, but in recent years cyber criminals have increasingly turned their attention to larger and therefore more rewarding targets (and not just monetary ones). This is also because small and previously easy victims are fighting back, upgrading digitally and becoming more vigilant. With the expected “small prey”, it is becoming less and less worthwhile for the attackers.
Companies, institutions, political players and entire states are now being targeted
It is therefore no longer just individual hackers – who take systems and private data hostage, targeting compromising content, account information and ultimately money – who are causing problems in this country. For the most part, it is no longer attacks on German users that originate in Germany. Instead, the World Wide Web and globalization are increasingly living up to their names. In 2024, the damage (in Germany alone!) caused by digital and analog data theft, sabotage and espionage amounted to 267 billion euros. A record sum and the sad climax of a global cyber war to date. At the Munich Cyber Security Conference, which took place from February 13 to 14, the countries that currently pose the greatest threat to Germany in particular, but also to Europe and large parts of the world, were clearly identified. Russia and China were followed by the USA. Cyber espionage and cyber attacks for the benefit of one’s own economy or national interests are on the rise. It is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a clear line between “friend” and “foe”. Above all, the dependencies of products and services – especially from China and the USA – are causing increasing concern for German business and industry. After all, how can you control something that you are dependent on and can only replace with difficulty? But which you don’t have in your own hands or have produced or programmed yourself?
The number of malware programs is increasing at an ever faster rate. Entire supply chains are under threat.
From 2023 to 2024, the number of malware programs increased by 26 percent. The cost of cyber incidents rose by 29% in the same period. The global cost of cyberattacks is expected to reach 10.5 trillion US dollars by 2025. It is no longer just about individual incidents that threaten individual companies. Criminals, but increasingly also state actors from other nations, are now targeting entire supply chains. The perfidious plan is that an attack on one company, a weak link in the chain, will cause the entire chain to break. In 2024 alone, several German companies in various economic and industrial sectors were attacked, including the steel group ThyssenKrupp, the business database GBI-Genios, the battery producer Varta, the baked goods producer Lambertz and the defense company Diehl Defence. Each of these incidents affected a large number of companies and projects, whether upstream or downstream. Attacks on network infrastructures are also on the rise, as the recent attack on Palo Alto Networks showed. Working from home and decentralized working after the pandemic opened this gateway and made it a worthwhile target. Because if you take away a company or network’s ability to communicate and transfer data, collaboration is passé.
Whole states and political systems are becoming cyberattack targets
Hacking is no longer “just” linked to economic interests. Extorting money, disrupting companies and supply chains or unsettling entire economic systems is no longer enough for modern hackers or hacker groups. Politics is also increasingly being targeted by both non-state and state actors. Especially in the context of geopolitical tensions, the digital space is becoming the new battleground. Although no blood is shed here, the dangers for citizens of entire nations are no less great. Disinformation, attacks on critical infrastructures and thus the spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD attacks, for “Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt”) are the new playing fields in disputes between individual nations or entire associations of states. The “Operation Aurora” initiated by China, an espionage attack on American companies or the “Stuxnet attack” by Israeli and American secret services on Iranian nuclear facilities are just two of the well-known examples uncovered by the media. The fact that Germany was also the target of a wide range of attacks (from disinformation to attacks on political actors) from abroad during the Bundestag elections is well documented.
New hacker trends are exacerbating the situation on all digital fronts
It is also known that machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being used in the field of cybercrime. The growing success of hackers is also due to the increasing quality and power of these still relatively new technologies. Data leaks, blackmail, threats and fraud are increasingly relying on intelligence that no longer knows any “right” or “wrong”. Texts written by foreign actors are becoming increasingly difficult to read due to AI-generated language. Attacks on IT systems are analyzed by AI in real time and adapted to the system under attack and its reactions. Phishing attempts supported by deep fakes, whether via voice, image or video, remove doubts from even the most critical tech users. In 2024, for example, the sports car manufacturer Ferrari was attacked in the latter way. Even if this attempt failed due to the reaction of a clever manager, Pandora’s box has long since been opened. Less and less should be believed. Check everything if possible. The hackers’ dirty game works. Users are manipulated, deceived and exploited. It’s no longer just the “gullible” who fall victim to cyberattacks.
Another method – known as “living off the land” – uses software tools that are part of the operating systems or application programs we use every day. Even modern security software is misled in this way and no longer recognizes the enemy in its own supposed ranks. Microsoft tools in particular are the focus here. But even Apple devices, long known to be difficult to attack, have lost their high walls. With the Digital Markets Act, the European Union is now forcing Apple to soften its exclusive control of end devices in Europe via its own app store, which was previously unavoidable. However, the new market freedom not only offers app providers a free price war, but also opens the door for hackers into Apple’s previously strictly controlled end devices.
Germany must now arm itself for the new threat situation
In the run-up to the Bundestag elections and in view of the current coalition negotiations and the upcoming formation of a government, Germany’s largest digital association Bitkom therefore outlined three essential fields of action for more cyber security, which Silicon Saxony can only agree with:
- Cyber threats do not stop at national borders – that is why security must be understood as a joint European task and tackled across departments. We need to build a genuine European ecosystem for cyber security. This can only happen with the involvement of the entire economy, from start-ups to global corporations.
- Legislation is important to strengthen cybersecurity, but it must not create unnecessary bureaucracy. Companies should be able to focus on the development and use of new security technologies instead of having to deal with complicated compliance requirements and reporting obligations. A practical, unbureaucratic and uniform implementation of European directives and regulations into German law would help here.
- The state must set an example in cyber security – with high standards for administration and infrastructure. This also requires the expansion of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) as a central office. And strategies such as the National Security Strategy must not only formulate goals, they must also make them measurable and consistently review the effectiveness of their measures.
Reductive initiatives such as the online tool “CYBERsicher Notfallhilfe” offered by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) are right and important for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, it would be more important to offer hackers – whether non-state or state-sponsored – the headwind online that can only lead to failure. The EU Cyber Resilience Act is a good start for our continent, but no more.
The battles of today and tomorrow will be fought digitally. The focus is on the “new oil”, our data. Protecting it and putting attackers in their place are the challenges facing Germany and Europe.
The question is: can we win this battle?
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Our magazine “NEXT – In Focus: Software” also features the topic of cyber security and lots of other exciting content. For example, you can read an interview with Frauke Greven, Head of the Digital Agency Saxony (DiAS), entitled “Investing in cyber security pays off”.
Photo: pixabay
