Police: Website crash a human error, not DDoS

The reason for the police website crash on Sunday was likely a human error and not a so-called DDoS cyber attack. The problems have been resolved and the police website is back online. A spokesperson for the police told the Telegraaf that the likely cause of the crash was that a large number of people tried to view a too large photo at the same time. It involved a photo of a woman whose body was found in a suitcase in Maastricht on Friday. The police released the photo on Sunday afternoon in the hope that the public would be able to help identify the victim. An hour later, the website crashed. The police initially suspected a so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, during which hackers send a large amount of traffic to specific servers in order to overload them. The police are still considering the possibility that the failure was caused by a combination of the photo and a DDoS attack. A technical investigation will make that clear.