Dutch government websites struggling with cyberattacks possibly from Russian hackers

Cyberattacks, potentially originating from Russian hackers, have been causing difficulties for Dutch government websites on Thursday. The Dutch court system's website, Rechtspraak.nl, was grappling with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The website of the Dutch Senate was also difficult to access on Thursday. The outages coincided with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the Netherlands, where he spoke to representatives of the Dutch Parliament, and delivered a speech at the World Forum in The Hague.

Since Thursday morning, the court system's site has been flooded with internet traffic, making it difficult for users to connect to it. The Council for the Judiciary reported that the attacker's identity remains unknown, and said that court cases are proceeding as usual.

The Council for the Judiciary said it will file a criminal report about the incident with the police. It is also preparing for the possibility that the attack could persist for several days.

A spokesperson for the Dutch Senate said the issue was due to "overloading." The National Cyber Security Center said it was aware of the incident.

According to a spokesperson, the incident aligns with the actions of "'hacktivists' with sympathy towards Russia,” but refused to provide further details. Hacktivism refers to the act of using computer hacking techniques for political or social purposes.

Cybersecurity firm FalconFeeds.io suggested that the attack on the Senate website might have been launched by NoName05716, a relatively unknown hacker group. These hacktivists regularly carry out digital attacks against opponents of Russia. During a DDoS attack like these, websites are overwhelmed with traffic, causing them to slow to a crawl and become difficult to access. For example, last month, the group reportedly targeted the Canadian Senate's website.

It remains uncertain whether the hackers have ties to the Russian state. Russia is home to some well-known hacker groups that are believed to work for intelligence agencies, such as Fancy Bear, also known as Pawn Storm, and Cozy Bear. These groups have also launched attacks on the Dutch government in recent years.