Dutch banks ABN Amro and Rabobank were again targeted by DDoS attacks on Sunday night, leaving their online banking services unavailable for a time, ANP reports.
The two Dutch banks were also targeted by such cyber attacks on Thursday. In a DDoS attack, a website is bombarded with data, overloading its server and crashing the site.
Rabobank and ABN Amro were targeted by DDoS attacks on Thursday night and Friday morning. As a result their online and mobile banking, iDeal payments and websites were hard to reach or completely offline for several hours.
The attacks on Rabobank started around 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, NOS reports. The problems were resolved shortly before midnight. ABN Amro was attacked during the early hours of Friday morning.
In a DDoS attack a website is bombarded by large amounts of data, crashing its server and therefore also the site.
The police released footage of the high-profile safety deposit box robbery at a Rabobank in Oudenbosch on Opsporing Verzocht on Tuesday. The surveillance camera footage shows two masked robbers. The police hope that someone may recognize them by the way they move.
The perpetrators who robbed safety deposit boxes in the Rabobank in Ouenbosch early in March, let them self be locked into the bank for two days to do so, the Public Prosecutor confirmed to NU.nl.
The police arrested two men on Monday morning in connection with a robbery of safety deposit boxes at the Rabobank in Oudenbosch early in March. Both suspects work for EBN - the company that provides security for the bank, the Telegraaf reports.
According to the Telegraaf, an alarm in the bank went off shortly before the robbery. Cameras recorded security guards behaving suspiciously.
The police team investigating the safety deposit boxes robbery at a Rabobank in Oudenbosch, is currently looking at the company responsible for the bank's security - Breda company EBN. The police confiscated the company's entire server.
Rabobank abused its position of power as banker of construction company Midreth, which went bankrupt in 2011, Financieele Dagblad reports on Thursday based on an unpublished judgment by the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal.
According to the court, Rabobank imposed "excessive" financial conditions on the construction company. That was in conflict with the bank's duty to care. Though the court added that there is no connection between Midreth's bankruptcy and Rabobank's measures.
On Wednesday morning the police arrested a 24-year-old man from Breda for violently robbing a 78-year-old woman in her home in Bladel last year. This robbery is linked to several other robberies committed based on information from Rabobank employees about customers who withdrew large sums of money from the bank.
The 78-year-old woman was seriously injured in the robbery in September 2017. The police believe she lay injured in her home for hours before being discovered, according to Omroep Brabant. The suspect was arrested in his home in Breda around 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday.
Rabobank customers are reporting problems with online banking on Thursday morning. They can't check their balance on the bank's website or mobile banking app. Fault report website Allestoringen.nl received thousands of complaints from Rabobank customers on Thursday, NU.nl reports.
The bank is aware of the fault and working to fix it, a spokesperson said to the newspaper. "Payments can still be processed, only the balance is not visible", the spokesperson said.
He could not say how long it will take to fix this problem.
A robbery targeting safety deposit boxes at a Rabobank branch in Oudenbosch over the weekend, may be one of the biggest bank robberies in Netherlands history. At least 300 safety deposit boxes were emptied, and the robbers got away with between 5 and 15 million euros, the Telegraaf reports.
According to the newspaper, many of the safety deposit boxes contained cash and even gold bars - there was so much cash and gold that the robbers could not take everything.
Burglars broke into a Rabobank branch in Oudenbosch and stole valuable belongings from several safety deposit boxes. The burglary happened sometime over the weekend and was discovered on Tuesday, according to NOS.
Exactly how many safety deposit boxes were robbed is unclear. The police speak of "a large number". An investigation is underway and the police are calling on witnesses to come forward.
Large Dutch banks invested billions in the meat industry over the past years, and a large part of that money went to companies where animal welfare is not in order, according to a new report by Eerlijke Bankwijzer. These include companies that sell battery farm chickens, keep their sows locked up in cages, or slaughter animals in controversial ways, RTL Nieuws reports.
The Eerlijke Bankwijzer, or Fair Bank Guide, looks at whether Dutch banks invest their money responsibly. Amnesty International, FNV, Mileudefensie and Oxfam Novib, among others, contribute to it.
Most Dutch people are not building sufficient financial buffers for a financially healthy future, Rabobank concludes based on a study by Nibud. Only two in five Dutch put money aside for training, income decreases, pensions, or healthcare, ANP reports.
Nibud questioned 2 thousand people for this study. Nearly half of respondents indicated that they are concerned about money matters in the future, yet most do nothing about it. Around a third don't have the money to set aside. But of the two thirds who do have financial room to set money aside, only 39 percent actually do so.
Housing prices in the Netherlands will increase even more this year than they did in 2017, according to Rabobank. Economists at the bank expects housing prices to increase by 8 percent on average in 2018, compared to 7.6 percent last year. Next year housing prices will increase by around 7 percent, NU.nl reports.
Rabobank agreed to pay 369 million dollars, around 300 million euros, to settle allegations that its California subsidiary Rabobank National Association (RNA) lied to regulators investigating charges of Mexican drug money laundering.
An 18-year-old Oosterhout man arrested in connection with DDoS attacks on Dutch financial institutions, wanted "to show that a teenager can simply crash all banks with a relatively simple attack", suspect Jelle S. wrote in an email to the Volkskrant shorty before his arrest.
The police arrested an 18-year-old man from Oosterhout in connection with multiple DDoS attacks on the Tax Authority, tech site Tweakers and internet provider Tweak last week, as well as on online bank Bunq in September last year. The man was arrested on Thursday, February 1st, the police said in a statement on Monday.
All major Dutch banks refuse to let entrepreneurs active in the cryptocurrency world open business account because of "too great compliance risks", Sprout reports after questioning ABN Amro, ING, Rabobank, Volksbank and Aegon subsidiary Knab about the matter. Only online bank Bunq allows cryptocurrency businesses to open accounts under certain conditions.
ABN Amro, ING, Rabobank and the Tax Authority again faced DDoS attacks on Tuesday, though this time the financial services managed to deter them better than over the weekend. The attacks caused a short disruption in payment system iDeal, but the problems were quickly restored, NOS reports.
ABN Amro was troubled by attacks all day long, but they were mostly successfully fought off, a spokesperson said to the broadcaster. Around 5:30 p.m. the bank faced a short disruption.
The DDoS attacks that hit ABN Amro, ING and Rabobank over the weekend and on Monday, came from servers in Russia, according to security company ESET. The company adds that this does not automatically mean that the perpetrators are also in Russia, the Telegraaf reports.
The Dutch Tax Authority was hit by a DDoS attack on Monday, NOS reports. According to the tax service, its site was difficult to reach for a time on Monday morning, but everything should be working again. Three Dutch banks also faced such cyber attacks since Saturday.
A number of online Rabobank services are unavailable on Monday due to a DDoS attack, the bank confirmed. Rabobank is the third Dutch bank affected by such a cyber attack since Saturday.
In a DDoS attack large amounts of data traffic is sent to a particular website, overloading its server and thereby crashing the site. According to Rabobank, some customers can currently not log into their mobile- and online banking. iDeal is also currently not available to everyone, a spokesperson for the bank told NU.nl.
The North American trade agreement NAFTA falling apart would have negative consequences for the three countries it covers - the United States, Canada, and Mexico - but not for the Netherlands, Rabobank said in a report drawn up in response to increasing uncertainty that NAFTA will survive. The agreement collapsing could give Dutch businesses a 3 billion euros boost, the bank calculates.
A 25-year-old man found dead in a Breda flat earlier this month is very likely one of two perpetrators of a violent robbery in Bladel last year, according to the police. That robbery forms part of an investigation into Rabobank employees tipping criminals off about people withdrawing large sums of money at the bank.
The police found trace evidence in the Bladel victim's home that investigators linked to the man murdered in the Breda flat, the police said in a statement on Wednesday.
