Berlin’s mayor on Friday said the city was being blackmailed after a data theft during a cyberattack two weeks ago. According to the German weekly Der Spiegel, the blackmailers are demanding 30 bitcoins -- the equivalent of about two million euros or $2.5 million. The publication, which cited confirmation from a security source, added that the group involved is believed to be the hacker collective Rhysida. Rhysida notably claimed responsibility for a ransomware attack against the British Library in 2023 and demanded payment of 20 bitcoins -- worth some $850,000 at the time. “Berlin is the victim of a serious crime,” said Kai Wegner, the outgoing mayor of the capital, which is both a city and a regional state. “The demand came in early on Thursday evening. Berlin will not give in to blackmail.” The cyberattack on August 14 left several city administrations, especially those dealing with housing and the environment, cut off from the network for a week. All applications for housing benefits and payments were impossible for several days. The authorities initially claimed that no sensitive data had been stolen but on Wednesday admitted that personal data may have been affected. According to Der Spiegel, Rhysida was threatening to publish the data if it did not receive the money within a week. Germany’s security services are working flat-out to apprehend the perpetrators, Wegner said, without naming them. Checks were also being made about which data was stolen. In the British Library case, it refused to pay the ransom and Rhysida published about 500,000 files on the dark web containing the personal data of visitors, subscribers and staff. One of Berlin’s deputy mayors, Iris Spranger, said the cyberattack did not affect the holding of elections in the city-state on September 20. “The vote is 100 percent secure,” she added.
