MH17 team hacked, bugged

By Maxime Zech on September 23, 2014 - 07:33
Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg
Dutch police commissioner Aalbersberg, leader of the repatriation mission. Source: Twitter/Karel van Oosterom/@KvanOosterom. (Dutch police commissioner Aalbersberg, leader of the repatriation mission. Source: Twitter/Karel van Oosterom/@KvanOosterom)

The Dutch investigative team in the east of Ukraine investigating the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were not only hampered from doing their job by rebel blocks and sabotage, but probably also had their computers and phones hacked. This was said by leader of the repatriation mission Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg on Radio 1 program Dit is de Dag, the Algemeen Dagblad reports. 

Aalbersberg does not say that there was concrete evidence of the investigative equipment or personal devices being hacked, but he says that the team is "assuming that this happened. In this kind of international circumstance many people are interested in our information."

The mission leader says he does not know who may have been hacking the MH17 investigative team's ICT equipment, but that all computers and phones were replaced with new material upon return to The Netherlands, just in case.

The team still hopes to recover all personal items of the plane crash victims at the crash site, as well as investigating the crash thoroughly.

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