[June 16, 2011] Cybercrime on the increase, warns German minister Tweet Jun 16, 2011 (dpa - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- BONN, Germany -- German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich warned Thursday that the danger of cyberattacks was on the rise and could threaten the country's infrastructure. He made the comments as he inaugurated a government centre tasked with cybercrime oversight. "Critical infrastructure such as electricity and water supply no longer works without ultra-modern IT systems," Friedrich told daily Frankfurter Rundschau. "The danger of cyberattacks on these systems is growing steadily." On Thursday, Friedrich opened the National Cyber Defence Centre in Bonn, whose 12 liaison officers will coordinate different federal institutions fighting online crime and analyse attempted cyberattacks in order to understand how computer hackers operate. Hacker attacks on French nuclear operator Electricite de France had shown how vulnerable such infrastructure systems were, Friedrich said. Tampering with them could lead to significant supply disruptions, or worse. A federal report on IT security, released Thursday, showed that criminal cyberattacks and industrial espionage were on the increase. "The methods are increasingly sophisticated, and it requires an increasingly large effort to block them," wrote the federal office charged with IT security. The centre was opened a day after it emerged that a hacker attack on US banking giant Citibank was a lot more extensive than previously thought, as data thieves stole information relating to the accounts of more than 360,000 credit card clients. To see more of dpa, go to http://www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Copyright (c) 2011, dpa, Berlin Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]