The suspected perpetrator behind the attack on routers in November 2016 has been detained in London according to the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt). Deutsche Telekom welcomes the arrest.
Reportedly, a 29-year-old British citizen was arrested at a London airport on February 22, 2017 by officers of the British National Crime Agency (NCA). The arrest was made on the basis of a European arrest warrant issued by ZAC NRW, the North Rhine-Westphalia central office for cybercrime of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Cologne. The investigations will be conducted by the German Federal Criminal Police Office, which prepared the arrest of the suspect in close cooperation with the British law enforcement authorities.
Thomas Kremer, Member of the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom AG for Data Privacy, Legal Affairs and Compliance said "We very much welcome the success of this international manhunt and have supported the law enforcement authorities with our experts. We are also looking into taking civil legal action against the alleged perpetrator. This case shows that the law can also be enforced in cyberspace. The arrest has been a major success against international cybercrime, which is increasingly making use of so-called botnets for large-scale attacks."
Deutsche Telekom was not the principal target of the global attack at the end of November 2016. And the attack did not even succeed: The malware failed to infect routers of Deutsche Telekom customers. However, about four percent of Deutsche Telekom customers experienced problems with their routers because some models were unable to cope with the overload from mass requests and crashed. Deutsche Telekom's security experts installed filters immediately to protect the routers. Customers were able to restart their router to install an update that fixed the problem.