Alexander Dobrindt, German Interior Minister, on cyberattacks: “We will disrupt attackers and destroy their infrastructure”

Germany is signalling a major shift in how it responds to digital threats, taking on a tougher stance that could see Berlin take the fight to hackers rather than await to defend against them.

At the centre of this change is Alexander Dobrindt, the country’s federal interior minister, who has made clear that passive defence alone is no longer sufficient in an era of escalating state-backed cyber operations.

In recent weeks, the minister has openly discussed plans to expand Germany’s cyber response capabilities beyond traditional defence. Dobrindt has said that German intelligence and security services should not only stop attacks in their tracks but also target the infrastructure to prevent future incursions.

Europe “hacking back” against cyberattacks

“We will disrupt attackers and destroy their infrastructure,” he told Süddeutsche Zeitung, laying out what security officials describe as “hacking back.”

Henning Zanetti, a spokesperson at Germany’s Interior Ministry, said: “Cyber defense is aimed at actively preventing, stopping, or at least mitigating attacks if they pose a serious threat. As with police action in analogous cases, this is done with the focus on eliminating the existing threat, regardless of who is responsible for it.”

Under this doctrine, Berlin is preparing allied legislative changes that would allow both foreign intelligence services and domestic agencies to launch offensive operations in cyberspace.

That includes actions against servers, networks or platforms linked to both hostile states and independent criminal actors who breach German systems. Until now, “hack back” measures have been largely avoided in Europe, given legal and diplomatic tangles; it appears that ideologies of “responsible state behaviour in cyberspace” are now being replaced with a more proactive stance.

The push comes against a backdrop of increasing cyber threats: government agencies, political parties, and private firms have faced a wave of attacks in recent years, with this heightened threat environment fuelling debates in Berlin over how far to go in responding.

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