Cybersecurity
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Fighting new threats in cyberspace
As individuals, companies and government agencies are increasingly relying on the internet, they are also becoming more vulnerable to crimes such as sabotage and espionage. Constantly emerging interfaces between the real and digital world provide new attack gateways for hackers.
At the same time, intelligence services of other countries have been increasingly focusing on the otherwise rather loosely organized hacker-underground scene over the last few years.
For example, hacker groups are being paid to establish structures in cyberspace that can be used for targeted attacks against critical infrastructures of other states.
BND cooperating with domestic authorities
It is of strategic importance to the Federal Republic of Germany to responsibly deal with these developments and to ward off cyber attacks.
Several security agencies contribute to this effort. We as the German foreign intelligence service play an important role in this cooperation.
SIGINT Support to Cyber Defense
The BND can identify cyber attacks that are launched from abroad and are aimed against critical infrastructures in Germany early on. We use our technical capabilities and powers for strategic signals intelligence (SIGINT) in
order to recognize the spread of malware in the run-up to an attack.
According to the Federal Office for Information Security, approx. 322,000 malware programmes are detected every day.
This information allows domestic agencies to adopt defensive measures to limit the damage caused by dangerous software. This method is referred to as »SIGINT Support to Cyber Defense«.
