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Claims That 120,000 Munich School Records Reached Darknet Trigger Criminal Probe

The inquiry could reveal gaps in oversight of the city’s outsourced school IT and affect thousands of pupils and staff.

Overview

  • A Monday Abendzeitung exclusive published in mid-June reported that datasets with names, addresses and other personal details for roughly 120,000 students plus school and municipal staff left servers of LHM‑Services and were linked to the Darknet.
  • LHM‑Services has filed a Strafanzeige against unknown persons, informed the Bavarian data protection authority and says it has a strong initial suspicion that a former employee downloaded large amounts of data on his last day in 2024.
  • The company hired Darknet specialists who so far report no evidence that the datasets are publicly available and the firm denies signs of a systemic leak while its internal review continues.
  • Bavarian cyber units, the Munich criminal police and the Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Bamberg have opened an active criminal investigation to establish what data left the company, where it went and who is responsible.
  • If the reports are confirmed, the exposure of sensitive data for thousands of children and educators would prompt changes to how the city oversees outsourced IT, sharpen controls on access and logging, and shape upcoming prosecutor and forensic findings.