Hackers were in German police computers for months

German police took months to notice that computer hackers had infiltrated federal police and customs service computers, media reports said Sunday, citing unnamed cyber security officials.

The Bild am Sonntag paper cited a confidential report by the BSI, the federal agency for cybernet security in Dusseldorf, as saying that federal police computers came under attack by hackers in September 2010.

But the attack, using so-called trojans or programs which allow data to be read from outside, was only discovered months later, in early 2011, the Bild am Sonntag report said. A break-in at a German customs-service computer became public a week ago when the hackers published stolen files on the internet.