50K Dutch accounts hacked

A large-scale data theft based in Germany, which came to light at the beginning of April, also hacked into 50,000 Dutch accounts. In total, 18 million account details were stolen including many e-mail addresses and their relevant passwords. According to the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), these details also include those from the government, and so-called 'vital organs', the specificities of these were not clarified by the spokesperson. The spokesperson for the NCSC emphasizes that many of the stolen details have expired by now, such as passwords that have been changed, limiting the chance that criminals are able to do anything with them. "At many organizations you are now obligated to change your password regularly. Employees are also already out of service or domain names are no longer actively used", the spokesperson explains. People who want to control whether their e-mail addresses were affected can do that via a special website from the German Federal Office for Information Technology Security, the BSI. People who have fallen victim to the hacking will be asked to change their passwords immediately.