Update 20 August 2026
We are again reachable by email.
Emails sent since Monday afternoon, 17 August, have been temporarily stored and are available for our staff to read and process again since Thursday, 20 August.
Emails sent to us between 27 July 2026 and Monday morning, 17 August 2026 did not reach us. Nor were they temporarily stored.
In addition, the work to further review and secure the remainder of the IT infrastructure continues.
Technical security incident in July 2026
In July 2026, an attack was carried out on a network component belonging to IDOS, through which an attempt was made to gain access to internal systems.
Both the investigations, which began immediately after the incident was discovered in collaboration with external IT security specialists, and the review of the security measures for IDOS entire IT infrastructure are ongoing. The affected network component, which was identified as the point of entry, has since been completely replaced.
The analyses, which have continued since the Statement of 6 August, confirm that all attempts to access internal systems attributable to the attack have failed; there is still no evidence of a breach, of access to stored data or of a data leak. No data has been encrypted by ransomware.
Thank you for your understanding.
Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Dr. Axel Berger, Margret Heyen
Update 17 August 2026
In July 2026, an attack was carried out on a network component belonging to IDOS, through which an attempt was made to gain access to internal systems.
Both the investigations, which began immediately after the incident was discovered in collaboration with external IT security specialists, and the review of the security measures for IDOS entire IT infrastructure are ongoing. The affected network component, which was identified as the point of entry, has since been completely replaced.
The analyses, which have continued since the Statement of 6 August, confirm that all attempts to access internal systems attributable to the attack have failed; there is still no evidence of a breach, of access to stored data or of a data leak. No data has been encrypted by ransomware.
Emails and IDOS availability
The Institute’s email and document systems remain disconnected from the network.
Emails sent to us since 27 July 2026 are still not reaching us. They are not temporarily stored and are returned to the senders after a few days with a message stating that the address is unreachable.
Alternatively, you can contact us by telephone.
Together with our external IT security specialists, we are working flat out to rebuild our IT infrastructure to ensure a secure and reliable recovery. However, this process will still take some time.
Our aim is to be reachable by email again by Friday, 21 August 2026. As soon as this is the case, we will inform you immediately and update this post.
Thank you very much for your understanding.
Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Dr. Axel Berger, Margret Heyen
Statement, Bonn, 6 August, 2026
In July 2026, an attacker gained access to a network component of IDOS and attempted to access internal systems.
Immediately after the incident was discovered, IDOS launched a comprehensive investigation in collaboration with external IT security specialists. This investigation is well underway but has not yet been fully completed.
The affected network component, which was identified as the point of entry, has since been completely replaced. In addition, we are currently reviewing the security measures for our entire IT infrastructure.
Data Security
All attempts to access internal systems that have been attributed to the attack have failed so far. No evidence of compromise was found on the systems examined to date. No data was encrypted by randsomware. To date, no access to stored data has been detected either. Based on current information, there is also no evidence of a data breach.
As things stand, there is no need for external partners to take any action. There is no indication that data from a collaboration with IDOS has been affected.
As a precaution, however, we have brought the matter to the attention of our Data Protection Officer and reported it to the relevant data protection supervisory authority. To date, no unauthorized access to personal data has been detected. Should this situation change, which we do not currently anticipate, we will provide another update.
Getting in contact with IDOS
At this time, our email and document systems remain disconnected from the network as a precautionary measure. As a result, emails sent to us since 27 July 2026 are not reaching us. They are not temporarily stored and will be returned to the sender after some time with a notification that the recipient is unreachable. We kindly ask that you resend these emails once our email service is restored. As of now, we expect email service to resume by approximately Friday, 14 August. We will provide a separate update on the exact time via our website and on our social media platforms LinkedIn and Bluesky. You can still reach us by landline.
Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Dr. Axel Berger, Margret Heyen