Ever heard of a DDoS attack? The abbreviation stands for Distributed Denial of Service — a deliberate blockade of digital services. If you have ever tried for hours to access the tax office's website, a university, or a telecommunications provider without success, it could have been because of a DDoS attack.

Municipal authorities, parliaments, political parties or prominent companies are often the targets. For example, on February 12, in the northern German city-state of Bremen, residents could not contact the police for almost two hours.

It turned out that 18,000 online requests per minute had inundated the servers. The system collapsed under the load. If the anonymous attackers aimed to unsettle the public, they succeeded. According to Bremen's Interior Ministry, Russian hackers admitted to carrying out the attack.

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The damage caused was rectified quickly, much to Carola Heilemann-Jeschke's relief. She is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in charge of IT security in Bremen. Cyberattacks like the one in February are the "new reality," she said in a podcast for the public-service media outlet Behörden........

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