A major cyberattack has crippled parts of Berlin's administrative network, prompting an emergency crisis session of the city-state's governing Senate. The breach forced two key departments — urban development and transport — offline and temporarily disrupted housing benefit payments, while briefly preventing residents from applying for postal ballots online ahead of the 20 September state parliament election. Officials say election systems were not compromised and no sensitive data was stolen, but the incident has exposed longstanding fragmentation in Berlin's IT security infrastructure, with the hack reportedly discovered only by chance by an alert employee.