National Cyber ​​Defense Center

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National Cyber ​​Defense Center
- NCAZ -

Logo (2011)
State level Federation
position Cross-agency coordination of protective and defense measures against IT security incidents
Supervisory authority Federal Office for Security in Information Technology
founding February 2011
Headquarters Bonn
Servants 10

The National Cyber ​​Defense Center ( NCAZ or Cyber-AZ ) is a cooperation facility of German security agencies at the federal level to defend against electronic attacks on IT infrastructures in the Federal Republic of Germany and its economy.

organization

The facility started its work on April 1, 2011 based on a cabinet resolution of February 23, 2011. The official opening by Federal Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich took place on June 16, 2011. The NCAZ is located at the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and is based in Bonn. The spokesman for the Cyber ​​Defense Center is BSI President Arne Schönbohm .

The core authorities of the Cyber ​​Defense Center are the BSI, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid (BBK). The Federal Criminal Police Office , the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Federal Police , the Federal Armed Forces with the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) and the Customs Criminal Police Office (ZKA) also act as associated authorities . The core authorities (BSI, Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and BBK) provide a total of ten permanent employees (of which BSI: 6 employees, BfV: 2 employees, BBK: 2 employees). The associated authorities are regularly involved via liaison officers on an ad hoc basis. The supervisory bodies for the operators of the critical infrastructures (KRITIS) should also cooperate while maintaining their statutory duties and powers.

According to the federal government, the cyber defense center is not an independent authority, which is why an establishment law is unnecessary as a legal basis. The basis of the cooperation are "cooperation agreements" of the authorities involved. All employees in the defense center should remain involved in their respective authorities , while maintaining the responsibility of the individual authorities and taking into account the separation requirement between the police and the intelligence services . The Joint Counter-Terrorism Center (GTAZ) set up in 2004 was the structural godfather of the National Cyber ​​Defense Center.

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the cyber defense center should not work or cooperate directly with any EU institutions, but existing structures of the authorities involved in the EU should be used and consistently expanded in order to convey the joint decisions made in the cyber defense center. The BSI cooperates with the European Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), whose Managing Director Udo Helmbrecht was previously President of the BSI.

tasks

According to Minister Friedrich , the central tasks of the defense center should be prevention, information and early warning against so-called cyber attacks . According to the "Cyber ​​Security Strategy for Germany", a cyber attack is understood to mean an IT attack in cyberspace that is directed against one or more other IT systems and aims to break IT security. The BSI considers types of cyber attacks to be, for example, identity theft , hacking, Trojan horse attacks, distributed denial of service attacks and Internet structural attacks (such as BGP hijacking). The need for the establishment of the National Cyber ​​Defense Center was justified, among other things, with the increasing, targeted electronic attacks on authorities and commercial enterprises in Germany, which are attributed to the People's Republic of China (including GhostNet ) since 2005 , and with highly complex attacks such as Stuxnet , which target the United States and Israel . According to the BSI, to create recommendations for action, among other things, information about perpetrators and weak points in IT products is exchanged and IT incidents, vulnerabilities and forms of attack are analyzed. While the NCAZ is under civil control and was also only created for civilian purposes, the equivalent military organization for cyber matters is the Strategic Reconnaissance Command . The military organization responsible for this is the Cyber ​​and Information Room Command (KdoCIR) , which came into service on July 1, 2017 .

The NCAZ advises the newly created National Cyber ​​Security Council and reports to it.

criticism

Critics complain that the NCAZ could not fulfill these tasks with only ten employees, that it was a "sham package" and "helpless war cry" and that at least ten times as many employees would be necessary.

Shortly after its official opening, the cyber defense center had to deal with a hacker attack by the no-name crew on the Patras tracking system. The PATRAS spying program evaluates position data, for example, which GPS receivers from vehicles of monitored felons and suspected terrorists transmit via mobile phone, shows the movement images of suspects on the PC, and is used by state criminal police offices, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and customs. According to FOCUS, the cyber defense center reported the "first data superpower of German security authorities" in an internal investigation report to the interior ministry; The hackers had been spying on confidential data on the central PATRAS server of the Federal Police in Swisttal-Heimerzheim , on which the unsuitable XAMPP server software was installed, and installed at least 42 Trojans on the hard drives, which is why the servers had to be switched off .

The Federal Audit Office also criticized the work of the Abwehrzentrum in a confidential report in 2014. The report particularly criticizes that the main purpose of pooling the competencies of the authorities involved is not being fulfilled and that there is no clear working structure. There is also no expertise available to even perform the tasks set. According to the Federal Audit Office, it is unclear "which products the cyber defense center regularly creates".

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ National Cyber ​​Defense Center , Federal Ministry of the Interior - official website. Retrieved November 14, 2014.
  2. ^ Comment on the Cyber ​​Defense Center: Truly not scary , Frankfurter Rundschau , June 16, 2011
  3. ↑ Federal Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich opened the National Cyber Response Center ( Memento of 19 June 2011 at the Internet Archive ) - Press release at BMI , of 16 June 2011
  4. ↑ a b c d The Federal Government's Strategy to Combat Internet Crime - The National Cyber ​​Defense Center Response of the Federal Government of May 2, 2011 (printed matter 17/5694) to the minor question from MPs Petra Pau, Jan Korte, Petra Sitte, other MPs and the LEFT parliamentary group. (Printed matter 17/5560), PDF.
  5. ↑ a b Interior Minister opens national cyber defense center , Heise online , from June 16, 2011
  6. ↑ Federal government adopts heise cyber security strategy on February 23, 2011
  7. ↑ New Managing Director at the European Network and Information Security Agency ENISA ENISA press release October 16, 2009
  8. ↑ https://www.cio.bund.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Strategische-Themen/css_download.pdf?__blob=publicationFile Cyber ​​Security Strategy for Germany BMI, February 2011
  9. ↑ Chinese provider briefly "hijacks" parts of the Internet heise, April 12, 2010
  10. ↑ Presentation: Cyber ​​Security in Germany (pdf, 3.47 MB) Hartmut Isselhorst, Department President at the BSI, June 2011
  11. ↑ VI. Electronic attacks, Constitutional Protection Report 2009 ( Memento from July 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.3 MB)
  12. ↑ Reuters / Thomas Peter: Snowden confirms NSA created Stuxnet with Israeli aid. July 9, 2013, accessed July 10, 2013 .
  13. ↑ BSI Management Report IT Security 2011 BSI, presented at the opening of the Cyber ​​Defense Center on June 16, 2011
  14. ↑ Three to five cases every day for the cyber defense center heise online , June 8, 2011
  15. ↑ Thin protective shield. ( Memento from October 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Commentary on the cyber defense center by Andreas Schwarzkopf, Frankfurter Rundschau , February 23, 2011
  16. ↑ Criticism of the planned Cyber ​​Defense Center Stefan Krempl, heise online. February 24, 2011
  17. ↑ National Cyber ​​Defense Center: Helpless war cry against attacks from the Internet ( Memento from June 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Comment by Matthias Lambrecht, Financial Times Germany , June 20, 2011
  18. ↑ Ralph Langner according to: National Cyber ​​Defense Center - Only ten permanent employees Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 16, 2011
  19. ↑ Attack on customs computers: Hackers outsmart antivirus software by Jenna Behrends, Axel Spilcker, Thomas van Zütphen, FOCUS Saturday, July 16, 2011
  20. ^ John Goetz, Jan Lukas Strozyk: Federal Audit Office criticizes cyber center: hardly any competence, hardly any acceptance. June 6, 2014, archived from the original on April 24, 2015 ; accessed on February 1, 2016 .