Russian hackers attack public transport chip card website, temporarily inaccessible

The website of public transport chip card (OV chip card) company Translink is unavailable on Saturday due to a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service), according to a spokesperson for the public transport chip card company. In the attack, the computer systems are bombarded with data traffic until they can no longer cope and collapse.

"There is a DDoS attack, which means that the website is temporarily inaccessible. There was an initial attack yesterday, which we were able to fend off with appropriate measures," said the spokesperson. However, travelers can check in and out as usual using their chip cards. Translink hopes that the problem will be resolved in the course of the afternoon.

The attack was claimed by the pro-Russian hacktivist group NoName05716, which attacks Dutch organizations in retaliation for supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia.

It is not the first time that Dutch companies or institutions have been attacked by the Russian hacker group. In the spring of this year, the Dutch government website and the website of the Dutch court system, Rechtspraak.nl, were subject to cyberattacks.