Here is the headline nobody in Berlin wants you to read: the state refused a 30-bitcoin ransom… and your data went up for sale anyway.
"We will not be blackmailed." That was Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner, standing tall, high on principle. His chief digital officer said the same: "a serious crime that harms everyone."
Sounds good? It is easy to be principled when it is not your data on the auction block.
What actually happened: Rhysida – a ransomware crew researchers pin to Russia and Eastern Europe – hit Berlin’s state government network. They broke in sometime in early August. Berlin shut down two departmental networks on August 14, and housing benefit applications froze for days. Real people’s rent money, stuck in a server the state could not protect.
Then came the demand: a minimum bid of 30 bitcoin – roughly EUR 2 million – to auction the stolen files back.
Berlin said no.
So on Friday, September 4, Rhysida published the files anyway. 5.7 terabytes of them. Contracts. Non-disclosure agreements. Personnel files. Passwords. Thousands of personal contact details. And the two departments the attackers actually reached? Mobility and Transport. Urban Development and Housing. You know – the ones holding housing benefit applications and building permits. The files on real residents, real businesses, real state employees.
The state’s own response says the material "may include personal information on state employees, on residents and on businesses."
Not "may." It IS your data. Yours, not theirs – and they spent it like it was free.
Now watch the accounting. The ransom was about EUR 2 million. Berlin instead now runs: two police task forces, a joint departmental unit, a crisis management team, an external legal adviser, and an ICT emergency task force meeting "until further notice." A city that just budgeted for – this is real – counseling for residents who find their own files in the dump.
Four task forces. Crisis teams. Counselors. External lawyers. And the instructions to the victims: file a criminal complaint. Online or at a police station.
The victims do the paperwork. The state does the press conferences.
And the timing: Berlin holds elections on September 20. The data landed September 4. The state says election infrastructure was untouched. Sure. Nobody outside the investigation has even verified what is in those 5.7 terabytes – the only number in this whole story that is actually firm is the price the criminals set.
Here is the part the polished coverage will not say: refusing ransom is a real doctrine – pay once, fund the next hundred attacks. Fine. Defensible. But when the refusal costs EUR 2 million and the alternative is 5.7 terabytes of citizen data on the dark web, somebody should be able to explain that trade to the housing-benefit applicant whose file is now in the dump. Not at a press conference. To their face.
Germany, by the way – 87% of companies reported an attack last year. The same state that lectures everyone about digital hygiene just lost 5.7TB of resident data and calls stubbornness a strategy.
And Bitcoin? The ransom was priced in the hardest money that has ever existed. 30 coins. The state would not touch it – politically radioactive. Instead it will burn many times that on task forces, lawyers, and counselors. Meanwhile the same institutions that cannot hold onto your personal data are the ones explaining why you should not hold your own money.
That is the part that should make you furious: they cannot protect your data, and they still want to control your money. Yesterday it was an exchange’s custody gap. Last month it was an Iranian spy crew on the ransom trail. In August it was France’s tax authority leaking records to a wrench attack. The rule never changes: the people holding your money and your data are the ones getting hacked.
Your money does not need four task forces to be safe. It needs you. Self-custody. Hold your own keys. Buy the coin the state finds too radioactive to touch – with the code LOVEISBITCOIN at https://loveisbitcoin.com/bull and stack it in your own wallet.
When the state will not even spend 30 bitcoin to protect your data, why the hell would you trust it with your money?
