Large-scale cyber assault: Web platform Dresden.de restored.
Dresden's City Administration Website Restored After Cyberattack
Dresden's city-run website, dresden.de, and associated internal applications for the town hall have resumed functioning following a complex cyberattack that surpassed all previous attacks in scope. The IT department of the city has been working closely with the Cyber Defense Center, the State Criminal Police Office, and federal security authorities, who have linked the attack to a Russian hacker group.
The cyberattack, classified as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, aimed to flood the website with an overwhelming amount of requests and data traffic to overload the computer network.
Dresden's website became unavailable over the weekend due to the attack, causing a temporary disruption of services. Berlin and Nuremberg also reported similar incidents, but preliminary findings suggest that the incidents were not technically related.
Following the attack, the IT experts of Dresden worked diligently to restore the systems. By May 2, 2025, the online services have been restored for citizens, and the offices of the city administration have resumed their work on the IT systems.
As state-sponsored or affiliated hacking groups frequently carry out such attacks to disrupt essential services, test response capabilities, and project power in the digital domain, the motivation behind the Russian hacker group's actions remains unclear at this time.
[1] According to available reporting and the context of recent cyberattacks attributed to Russian hacker groups on German municipal IT systems, the suspected goal of such attacks is broadly to disrupt public infrastructure, create chaos, and undermine confidence in local authorities. Personal motivations for the specific attacks in Dresden, Berlin, and Nuremberg in April 2025 are yet to be documented by German authorities or cybersecurity experts.
- The cyberattack on Dresden's city-run website, a general-news topic, was linked to a Russian hacker group, aligning with the pattern of recent attacks on German municipal IT systems, which usually aim to disrupt public infrastructure, create chaos, and undermine confidence in local authorities, falling under the crime-and-justice category.
- As the city of Dresden's website resumed functioning after the cyberattack, its IT department has been utilizing cybersecurity technology to ensure robust defense against such attacks in the future, thus strengthening the city's digital security infrastructure.
