G 0.41 Sabotage

Sabotage refers to the deliberate manipulation or damage of objects or processes with the aim of causing harm to the victim. Particularly attractive targets can be data centers or communication connections of authorities or companies, since relatively minor means can achieve a major impact here.

The complex infrastructure of a data center can be manipulated in a targeted manner through influencing important components, possibly by external perpetrators, but especially by internal perpetrators, in order to cause operational disruptions. Particularly threatened here are insufficiently protected building-technical or communication-technical infrastructure as well as central supply points that may not be monitored organizationally or technically and are easily accessible to external parties without observation.

Examples:

• In a large data center, manipulation of the UPS led to a temporary total failure. For this, the UPS was repeatedly manually switched to bypass and then the main power supply to the building was manipulated. In total, four failures occurred over three years. In some cases, there was even hardware damage. The operational disruptions lasted between 40 and 130 minutes.

• Within a data center, sanitary facilities were also housed. By clogging the drains and simultaneously opening the water supply, water entered central technical components. The damage caused in this way led to operational interruptions of the production system.

• For electronic archives, sabotage poses a particular risk, since usually many documents worth protecting are stored in a small space. This means that through targeted, low-cost manipulations, considerable damage can potentially be caused.