Zeeland port website hit by DDOS attack, possibly by Russian hackers

A DDoS attack took down the North Sea Port website, the company that operates the ports of Vlissingen and Terneuzen in Zeeland, and the Gent port in Belgium. The website was inaccessible for several hours, starting at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

By early afternoon, the attack had been repelled, and the site was up and running again. Work in the port continued as usual, those systems were not affected.

North Sea Port confirmed the attack. Russian hackers claimed responsibility, but the port authority would not comment on that, saying they were not in a position to provide information about the attackers.

Cybersecurity firm FalconFeeds.io said the site may have been attacked by NoName05716, a relatively unknown hacker group. These hacktivists regularly carry out digital attacks on those they consider to be opponents of Russia.

In May, NoName05716 allegedly shut down the sites of the Dutch court system and the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate. This happened during a unannounced visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the Netherlands.

Earlier this month, the hackers allegedly carried out attacks on the websites of the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Den Helder and Eemshaven/Delfzijl. Port sites have also been shut down in Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Greece, Bulgaria and Latvia.

Distributed denial of service attacks, which is abbreviated as DDoS, are quite easy to organize and execute. In such cyberattacks, websites are flooded with more traffic than they were designed to handle, causing them to falter and to become difficult to reach. Such a DDoS attack is irritating for the victim, but typically the damage is limited if the underlying systems are not damaged.