Pro-Russian hackers disrupt Dutch government websites ahead of NATO summit
On Monday morning, an online service used by Dutch municipalities and provinces to publish official documents was likely targeted by a digital attack, De Telegraaf reported. This has made web pages containing council and provincial council documents from regions such as Zuid-Holland and Overijssel, and cities including The Hague, Den Bosch, and Delft, difficult to access.
The pro-Russian hacker group NoName05716 claimed responsibility for the attack through its Telegram channel. The group has previously carried out similar attacks on websites in countries supporting Ukraine.
NotuBiz, the company providing the service to the municipalities, reported experiencing a large volume of network traffic directed at its systems. The spokesperson said that the company’s firewall “is doing its job properly, blocking traffic and placing users in a queue.” However, this results in very long page load times for visitors. NotuBiz has not officially confirmed that the disruption is caused by a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.
The municipality of The Hague confirmed that multiple suppliers are seeing “large amounts of network traffic towards their systems.” Officials described the situation as a nationwide issue. “As a result, various domains used by the municipality of The Hague are intermittently slow or unreachable.”
The Hague is scheduled to host the annual NATO summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. Ahead of the summit, authorities had already warned of potential cyberattacks.
