The Netherlands will start helping Ukraine in the fight against cyber-attacks carried out on the country. There is currently a cyber security specialist ready to assist when needed. But what else will Dutch support in a possible cyber war look like?
A few weeks ago, Mark Rutte and Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra visited Kiev where they spoke with Ukrainian President Zelensky. During this visit they offered help in fighting cyber attacks. This offer has now been accepted by Ukraine.
The Netherlands will provide assistance as part of the Cyber Rapid Response Team (CRRT) established in 2020. The team is a collaboration of the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, Croatia, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. Cyber security experts from these countries can work together to prevent or combat cyber attacks. From the Netherlands, the Defense Cyber Security Center is affiliated with the team.
The request from Ukraine now is to help with cybersecurity research on vulnerabilities in the country's vital systems.
It is still unclear what the cybersecurity assistance will look like in the near future. The cyber specialist will initially operate from the Netherlands, but could also end up on location in Kiev when needed. It is also not yet known how many specialists will eventually be needed to assist Ukraine.
The Ministry of Defense does make it clear that Dutch assistance will be defensive in nature. The emphasis will be on investigating vulnerabilities in Ukrainian systems.
That Ukraine is the target of cyber attacks was evident recently. Several government sites and banks were hit by cyber attacks. Gigantic DDoS attacks caused, among other things, that corona access cards were not accessible and ATMs did not work. It also appeared that Dutch servers were used in the DDoS attacks.
Russia is said to be responsible for the attacks but strongly denies this itself.
The Netherlands is not the first to assist Ukraine. The United States and the United Kingdom already sent cyber warfare experts to Ukraine in late 2021.
