Some municipal online services and websites are currently unavailable
On Thursday, July 16, some of the City of Wiesbaden’s online services and websites were either unavailable or experiencing disruptions, including wiesbaden.de. The cause was likely a distributed denial-of-service attack. The city is also currently receiving an increased number of spam emails and bot calls, which are believed to be related to the attack. Countermeasures have been taken.
The systems are currently back online, though further disruptions cannot be ruled out. To minimize the impact as much as possible, the city is continuously monitoring the situation and responding promptly as needed. All affected systems are being continuously monitored in collaboration with the responsible service providers. The city is also consulting with security authorities regarding the attacks and possible countermeasures.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) essentially means “making something inaccessible” or “taking something offline.” According to the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), in a DDoS attack, a server is deliberately bombarded with so many requests that it can no longer handle the volume of requests and either denies service or, in the worst case, crashes.
In a “distributed DDoS attack” (DDoS), according to the BSI, a large number of different systems are used in a widely coordinated attack instead of a single attacking system. The high number of computers attacking simultaneously makes these attacks particularly effective.
This press release is issued by the Press Office of the State Capital of Wiesbaden, Schlossplatz 6, 65183 Wiesbaden, pressereferatwiesbadende Citizens with questions can contact the responsible department or office.