EuroWire September 2018

Transatlantic cable

Boosting defence spending is a contentious matter, and legal justifications for offensive cyber missions are ambiguous. She wrote: “This is new, uncomfortable terrain for a country battling to overcome a weak digital infrastructure.” † † Even so, German authorities are racing to fortify defences against the cyberattacks that intelligence agencies have warned pose an increasing danger to critical infrastructure. Mr Krempel said that his cyber command hopes to reach full operating capacity by 2021, provided it can staff up. Last year the defence ministry, faced with stiff competition from the tech industry for recruits, announced that it was “desperately searching for nerds.” Needless to say, beefing up cyberdefence comes at a price. Setting up and staffing the cyber command unit in 2017 reportedly cost some $3.06 billion. But, at the centre’s inauguration, Germany’s defence minister Ursula von der Leyen said much more money was needed to draw the best and brightest minds. Ms Somaskanda reported that Berlin’s proposed budget, which was to be put to a vote in early July, allots $48.9 billion to the defence ministry in 2019, a 12 per cent increase on 2017. Dorothy Fabian USA Editor

services, from electricity to health care. (“Cyberattacks Are ‘Ticking Time Bombs’ for Germany,” 4 th June). Among the targets mentioned by Ms Somaskanda were NetCom BW, a regional telecom in Baden-Württemberg that is a subsidiary of EnBW, one of Germany’s biggest power utilities; a steel mill that suffered severe damage after a cyberattack blocked a blast furnace from powering down properly; and the government itself, which in 2015 suffered its deepest breach when a group linked to the hackers APT28 extracted some 16 gigabytes of data from the Bundestag, the German federal parliament. After that hack, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government unveiled an updated cybersecurity strategy now being implemented in large part by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and the National Cyber Defence Centre. The German military is building up its own cyber defences for the protection of military intelligence, communications, and ge- ographic-information systems. The effort faces formidable challenges. Ms Somaskanda reported that Lieutenant Colonel Marco Krempel, who heads a 250-person-strong leadership team at the Cyber and Information Space Command, likens his department’s mission (building a cybersecurity army while also responding to ongoing challenges) to “tuning a driving car.” At the same time, Ms Somaskanda noted, Germany’s strong post-war tradition of pacifism poses a dilemma for those charged with protecting the country from hackers.

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September 2018