Nius data leak: Stolen data is genuine

The portal “nius.de,” run by former Bild editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, fell victim to a cyberattack over the weekend. The website was visually redesigned (defacement), and the database of subscribers to the service was published. Evidence is now mounting that the data is genuine.

Reichelt himself posted a message on X on Tuesday afternoon confirming the authenticity of the data. He stated that nius had “reported the attack on our data to the police.” Reichelt accuses T-Online and Der Spiegel of committing criminal offenses by naming names and placing those affected under general suspicion. He reports that those affected contacted his portal because they had been contacted by the media and were now afraid of being exposed.

T-Online has contacted some individuals included in the data leak. The data in the published file includes first names, last names, email addresses, payment information, selected subscriptions, and, in some cases, addresses. T-Online also assumes that the data is genuine.

Affected parties informed, data protection incident reported

The incident was reported to the Berlin data protection officer on Monday, a spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday in response to an inquiry from heise online: “The responsible party reported a data breach to us on July 14, 2025. The underlying vulnerability has been closed and those affected have been notified. No complaints have been received regarding the data breach so far.”

The cyberattack on nius.de became known on Sunday. At that time, however, much was still unclear, in particular whether the approximately 5,700 data records actually belonged to subscribers of the portal. According to T-Online, the company Vius SE & Co. KGaA, which operates the nius portal, apparently informed those impacted about the publication of their data on Monday night.

(dmk)