Cyber attacks on lottery websites

Several lottery websites were the target of cyber attacks at the turn of the year. Some of the online services were temporarily suspended, and some personal data may have been leaked. However, more specifics are not yet known.

No online tip possible in Brandenburg

The Brandenburg lottery company temporarily shut down its online service for security reasons after anomalies were detected when accessing the website. As a result, it was not possible to submit online tips. In the meantime, the online service has been fully restored. All lottery tickets booked online took part in the respective selected lottery draw as usual.

There had been similar reports from Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate. The lottery companies there also briefly blocked access to their websites. In all cases, an unusually large number of automated login attempts had been detected. Anomalies were also reported in Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin. All of this suggests an organized attack on the lottery companies in Germany.

However, the attack does not appear to have been crowned with great success. Operations are back to normal throughout Germany. Only the Brandenburg lottery company provided more detailed information on the damage caused. For example, 235 of the total of 50,000 online accounts were found to be conspicuous. Whether data was stolen here, however, could not be determined. According to its own information, Lotto Brandenburg has contacted all those affected.

In addition to the lottery companies, the City of Potsdam and the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg were also attacked at the end of December.