A group of pro-Russian hackers took down the websites of several Dutch municipalities and provinces on Monday in retaliation for the Netherlands’ military assistance to Ukraine.
At least 19 websites were affected by the coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which overload websites and applications with targeted requests to knock them offline, the Algemeen Dabbled newspaper reported.
The hacker group NoName, which previously claimed credit for DDoS attacks across Europe, the U.S. and Ukraine, said it picked the latest target as the Netherlands because it had sent Ukraine 6 billion euros in military assistance.
“It's time to visit the Netherlands again and remind you how the help of the Kyiv regime ends,” NoName wrote on Telegram Monday.
Cybersecurity experts say NoName hackers target between five and 15 websites per day for a greater impact of DDoS attacks, which frustrate users but otherwise do not steal information or compromise critical infrastructure, according to the NL Times.
NoName targeted the websites of local governments in Switzerland and France over the past year.
The Dutch military intelligence service revealed last week that Russian hackers targeted an unidentified public facility in the Netherlands last year, marking the first known cyberattack on its infrastructure.
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