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Headquarters of Germany's Federal Intelligence Office, Berlin (by Fridolin Freudenfett [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia Commons ) Cyber security experts of the German government have warned of possible Russian cyber attacks on power plants that could cause blackouts across Europe. According to German magazine Der Spiegel , the National Cyberdefence Centre (Nationales Cyber-Abwehrzentrum, NCAZ), an agency set up by the German federal government in 2011, issued a report warning that Russian hacking attacks on infrastructure could disrupt energy, water and gas supply as well as traffic. Due to the interdependence of Europe's infrastructure, a cyber attack on Germany could impact other European countries. The report was drawn up by experts from the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Intelligence Service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Federal Office for Information Security and other government bureaus.  The German authori

On Wednesday 18  Next Media , Hong Kong's largest media company, was the target of an unprecedented hacking attack that paralysed some of its most prominent websites, such as that of the popular newspaper Apple Daily . Tim Yiu, Next Media 's chief operating officer, said that he received the first reports of massive attacks at around 2 am. According to Eric Chen, the president of Apple Daily Taiwan , the company had reinforced its web defences against hacking following attacks in February, but the last attacks were so strong that the system was overwhelmed. The Hong Kong website of Apple Daily  was able to resume operations only after 12 hours, while its Taiwan edition was affected less severely. Apple Daily head office in Taipei ( source ) It is not clear who is behind the attacks, but many suspect that they were launched on Beijing's initiative or by pro-Beijing groups. Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Media, stated that he didn't want to speculate, but tha