Russian hackers took down several websites of Belgian institutions on Thursday. These include the site of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo's Chancellery, the Senate and the Royal Palace. The cyber attack is a retaliatory action because of the Belgian federal government's political support for the regime in Ukraine. This was confirmed by the Center for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) to Belgian media, including VRT NWS and De Morgen.
Experts at the CCB tell us these are DDoS attacks. "DDoS" stands for Distributed Denial of Service. This is a type of attack in which hackers deliberately try to take a corporate network or server off the air by flooding it with connection requests. Sooner or later, the system becomes overloaded, resulting in either no response or very slow response. Even legitimate connection requests then no longer get through.
The attacks followed shortly after Prime Minister Alexander De Croo pledged that Belgium would supply F16 fighter jets to Ukraine starting in 2025. That angered pro-Russian hackers. Thereupon they bombarded the website of the Prime Minister's Chancellery, the Senate and the Royal Palace. The text on the front page was altered by the hackers.
"We are coming to Belgium to destroy Russia-hating sites. Belgian authorities promised to send F16 aircraft to Ukraine, as well as ongoing training of Ukrainian pilots. Belgium also announced to give 1.7 billion euros to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. History always punishes those unwilling to learn from their mistakes," Belgian media reported some time ago.
These texts have since been removed and the original content restored. A spokesman for the Center for Cybersecurity Belgium confirmed that measures had been taken to avoid inconvenience. "The prevention measures have worked well," he told VRT NWS.
According to newspaper De Morgen, Russian hacker group NoName057(16) is responsible for the DDoS attacks on the sites of Belgian agencies. This group has also targeted several targets in our country with cyber attacks in the recent past, claiming it is because of our "anti-Russian stance" and the decision to supply minesweepers and naval vessels to Ukraine.
Maastricht Aachen Airport and OV-NL, the association of public transport companies in the Netherlands, confirmed being attacked by the Russian hacker group in early August. As a result, the airport's website and interest group were inaccessible for some time. The DDoS attack had "no operational value," a spokesperson for OV-NL told us.
The Chamber of Commerce (CoC) was also targeted by the Russian hacktivists. The same goes for the municipality of Vlaardingen, SNS Bank and several Groningen port companies. "The impact of DDoS attacks is often limited and symbolic. Groups behind DDoS attacks use strong rhetoric to call attention to their executed digital attack and political goal. They often spread this through social media," the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) said of the attacks.
