German database company Genios confirms ransomware attack

GBI Genios, a database company used by numerous media organizations in Germany, announced on Tuesday its servers were unavailable “due to a massive hacker attack.”

In a post on LinkedIn, Genios said the incident was a ransomware attack and cautioned, “unfortunately we have to assume an outage for several days.”

“Our communication options are also limited. We will inform you as soon as we can foresee when access will be possible again. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope for your understanding,” the statement added.

The Munich-based company is a subsidiary of both the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Handelsblatt Media Group. Alongside media entities, the company’s databases are widely used by universities and libraries.

Its offerings include text-searchable archives of newspapers, as well as business information, analytical dossiers, and e-books.

A spokesperson for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said its systems and its subsidiaries were not affected.

“Only those applications from our archive, which are hosted by Genios, are currently not available,” the newspaper added.

Genios also provides a database called WISO to higher education organizations, which is also unavailable, as confirmed by Kempten University. The applied sciences school in the Allgäu region earlier this year announced being targeted by a criminal cyberattack that forced the institution to take down its IT infrastructure.

“The database provider Genios is working on a solution. Unfortunately, at the moment we have to assume that there will be an outage of several days. As soon as WISO is available again, we will inform you here,” stated Kempten.

The University of Giessen and Heilbronn City Library have also announced being affected by the Genios incident as customers of the company. There is no suggestion that the attackers have been able to use their access to Genios to target its customers.