Germany has experienced a big increase in the number of security incidents hitting critical infrastructure such as power grids and water suppliers, the BSI cybersecurity agency said on Sunday, adding however that they were not all due to hacking. The Welt am Sonntag weekly had reported on Sunday that Germany had learned of 157 hacker attacks on critical infrastructure companies in the second half of 2018 compared to 145 attacks in the whole of the previous year.

"The number of reports of IT security incidents has increased but it is not to be equated with the number of cyber attacks," tweeted the BSI in response to the newspaper report. "Reports are also made for other reasons such as technical problems," it added. The attacks were aimed at sabotaging power supplies and manipulating water supplies or disrupting communications lines, the paper said, adding security authorities suspected foreign intelligence agencies were behind such attacks.

Copyright Reuters, 2019