Ransomware attack cripples German business intelligence provider

Ransomware attacks on a database company, GBI Genios, have left German institutions without access to press publications and business information. It may take days to restore services.

GBI Genios is a German database company providing various institutions with full-text publications from the press and information on businesses, such as credit reports, company profiles, annual financial statements, and others.

It works as a one-stop shop for news articles from 400 publishers, business-relevant eBooks, and business and market information. The company also provides IT services for research, business intelligence, and data analytics. It’s widely used among numerous media organizations, universities, libraries, etc.

“Due to a massive hacker attack (ransomware attack), our systems are unfortunately currently unavailable. We are working at full speed on the remedy, but unfortunately, we have to assume an outage for several days,” the company announced on its LinkedIn profile.

Currently, the company’s website, servers, and services are unavailable.

“Our communication options are also limited. We will inform you as soon as we can foresee when access will be possible again,” GBI Genios posted and apologized for the inconvenience.

GBI Genios is owned by two large publishers in Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Handelsblatt Media Group.

The ransomware attack affected services from other research institutions. The library at Kempten University announced that its WISO database and ebooks in the library catalog are not accessible.

“The database provider Genios is working on a solution. Unfortunately, at the moment, we have to assume that there will be an outage of several days,” the library posted.

Other libraries across Germany shared similar announcements. According to the Record, the University of Giessen and Heilbronn City Library were affected by the Genios incident.