Ever since dictator Putin started fighting Ukraine on the Internet, the cows owned by farmer Birgit Rombach (34) and her husband Michael (37) have lost touch.
Because sensors on their 35 dairy cows register the bodily signals of the animals and report them via the Internet to the dairy farmers’ mobile phones: Are all the animals doing well? Are the animals eating enough, is a calf on its way?
“Data that is very important for animal welfare,” says farmer Birgit.
Beautiful but secluded: the farm of the dairy farmersPhoto: Sascha Baumann / all4foto.de
But the last time Birgit Rombach received this data was more than four weeks ago.
The farmer’s wife to BILD am SONNTAG: “With the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, we were digitally cut off shortly after 3:30 a.m. Then our cows had contact with our herd management server again, then it broke off.”
The modem no longer worksPhoto: Sascha Baumann / all4foto.de
But is it really Vladimir Putin’s fault? More precisely: a Russian cyber attack?
Yes, believes Prof. Andreas Knopp from the Institute for Information Technology at the University of the German Armed Forces in Munich. The KA-SAT satellite system of the US operator ViaSat, which provides customers in remote areas with Internet, was attacked.
The Internet came into the house via the satellite dishPhoto: Sascha Baumann / all4foto.de
In remote areas such as the idyllic meadows and forests of the Upper Black Forest, where the Rombachs’ Simonsjörgenhof is located. Here they manage around 30 hectares of pasture land and just as much forest.
“Internet has always been difficult, if not impossible, here,” says Birgit Rombach. The only way to communicate with the outside world after all: a connection via satellite. But since the beginning of the war there has been radio silence.
Not that Putin’s hackers were targeting Germany’s milk supply. Expert Knopp rather suspects collateral damage: “It may be that the Russians actually wanted to cut the Internet connections in Ukraine.”
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Officially, Rombach’s Internet provider writes on its website that there are indications that “it could be a cyber incident”. All of the customers’ modems had become unusable as a result of the attack.
Birgit Rombach is desperate.
Contact with the dairy has been lost. If she wants to see accounts or submit applications to the agricultural office, she has to drive to Titisee-Neustadt, which is seven kilometers away. There she can at least temporarily use the evangelical parish office in the church to log into the WLAN.
Nobody can currently say how long the family and their cows will have to get by without the Internet. At some point, the farmer hopes, they will get a fast fiber optic connection.
Sometime.