Dutch Government Websites Halted by Cyber-Attack

A number of Dutch ministerial sites were brought offline for several hours by a massive distributed-denial of service attack.

“The government’s sites have been the target of a DDoS attack since last night around 8:00 pm,” deputy director Robert Wester told the AFP. The sites remained offline throughout the night as IT teams tried to restore access to the affected services.

This is not an isolated incident: the Dutch IT infrastructure was the target of other attacks last month that managed to stop access to key services such as tax payments and bills because the digital trust infrastructure had been taken offline.

Apart from government agencies, DDoS attacks have targeted Dutch banks such as ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank, but also airline KLM.

As of 2013, the Netherlands is the sixth-fastest Internet connection in the world, which is probably one reason the DDoS attacks have become so devastating. Since 2011, DDoS attacks against Dutch infrastructures have gone up 200 percent.