Germany REFUSED To Pay Hackers 30 Bitcoin... And Paid A Heavy Price

Berlin’s state government was hit by a ransomware attack that reportedly stole 5.8 terabytes of sensitive data and demanded 30 Bitcoin, worth around 2 million euros at the time. The host explains how the attackers used a fake CAPTCHA and exposed weak internal practices, including passwords stored in plain text inside office files, to move through the network and copy roughly 1.44 million files before the breach was detected.

Berlin refused to pay, with the city publicly saying it would not be blackmailed. The episode argues that paying would have bought only an unverifiable promise from criminals, while also encouraging future attacks. Once the deadline passed, stolen files were published anyway, including contracts, payroll records, private contact details, infrastructure notes, and analysis of weak points in the water supply.

The broader point is that Berlin’s breach was not a one-off but a symptom of Germany’s slow, fragmented digital infrastructure. The host links the incident to earlier ransomware cases in Germany, Ireland, and the UK, and argues that governments handling huge volumes of personal data remain attractive targets when their systems lag behind attackers.