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Dutch government websites KO'd by 10-hour DDoS

Sustained assault took down gov mouthpiece

The Netherlands government’s websites were taken offline for around 10 hours on Wednesday following a DDoS attack.

The motive for the sustained packet-flinging assault – directed against the Dutch government website's hosting provider, Prolocation – remains unclear.

A brief statement (Google translation here) by the Dutch government confirmed the attacks.

The failure of Rijksoverheid.nl and many other government websites was caused by a DDoS attack. The outage began on Tuesday, February 10th at 10:00 am and lasted into the evening. Service Public Communications, part of the Ministry of General Affairs, together with Centric / Prolocation and the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) investigate the attack.

Darren Anstee, director of solutions architects at Arbor Networks, commented: “Based on the information currently available, it looks as if a variety of attack vectors may have been used in these attacks, which in itself is not that unusual.”

Dave Larson, CTO of Corero Network Security, another DDoS mitigation technology supplier, added: “Unfortunately, the sheer size and scale of hosting data centre operator network infrastructures and their massive customer base presents an incredibly attractive attack surface due to the multiple entry points and significant aggregate bandwidth that acts as a conduit for a damaging and disruptive DDoS attack. The DDoS attack against Dutch government website hosting provider, Prolocation, is a prime example.

“As enterprises increasingly rely on hosted critical infrastructure or services, they are placing themselves at even greater risk from these devastating cyber threats – even as an indirect target,“ he added. ®

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