As a system-relevant shall apply, depending on the context, not just the super-markets and big banks, but also supercomputers. Without the computing power, not much more runs today in the Central areas of research. Imagine, then, the most powerful research computers in Germany would be out of operation.
Thomas Thiel
editor in the features section.
F. A. Z.
that is Exactly what happened. Two weeks ago, the three largest German computer, the Hawk in Stuttgart, the Supermuc in Garching, Germany, and the jewel in Jülich by a hacker placed an attack to a complete standstill. Further attacks met with high-performance computers at the universities in Dresden, Karlsruhe and Freiburg, which have been “down”. Because at the same time multiple data centers in Europe have been attacked, is suspected to be a coordinated attack, may move on to information about the research to the Covid-19 vaccine. What speaks against this assumption, however, is not researched at all affected data centers Corona is.
Haya Shulman from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure information technology considers that it is not even likely that the attack has ever been subject to science. Research data were stolen, according to its knowledge, and had it had the hackers actually on the science apart, you could have more damage left. But what was the motive? According to Shulman, there is some evidence that the hackers wanted to tap into the computing power of the Supercomputer for the production of crypto-money. Gateway the hackers were probably stolen Account data. And because the major European data centers are all connected to each other, is sufficient, apparently, the password-stealing to a place, even in the rest of the data centers to inject.
more Serious damage
As ever to hacker attacks, is experienced by the Affected first little. The sparse information available is partly explained by the fact that public communication by the hackers will closely followed. In addition, it is probably only once perplexed and shocked. In some cases, such as in Freiburg, it is not even clear when the attack has even started.
The damage is considered serious and can only be removed by the time-consuming reinstallation of the systems to fix it. Thus, the Central areas of the science from falling temporarily. The computer is today at the heart of many researches. Whether in the case of climate models, brain simulations, analysis of particle physics or of the research on the effects of drugs: Wherever large amounts of data, patterns and models to be calculated, can not be waived on the mainframe, not least in the development of the scientific Computing itself.