State attack suspected: data of almost all police officers in the Netherlands stolen

State attack suspected
Data stolen from almost all police officers in the Netherlands

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Hackers manage to break into the Dutch police’s computers. The perpetrators stole the contact details of almost all police officers in the country: names, email addresses and telephone numbers. Amsterdam suspects a “state actor” was behind the attack.

The Dutch government has blamed a “state actor” for a massive hacking attack on the police. “The intelligence and security services consider it very likely that a state actor is responsible for the hacker attack,” Justice Minister David van Weel wrote to the Dutch parliament. However, he did not name a specific country.

Van Weel had previously confirmed media reports that hackers had managed to obtain the contact details of almost all of the approximately 65,000 Dutch police officers last week. This included names, email addresses, telephone numbers and, in some cases, other personal data.

“I can imagine that the police officers are worried about the possible consequences of the hacker attack,” said van Weel. “The police chief and I take this hacker attack very seriously,” the minister added. The police, together with other security authorities, are trying to “protect the police officers and prevent further harm”.

Secret service discovers malware

The police and the Dutch secret service initially did not provide any further information about the cyber attack and referred to the ongoing investigation. Dutch military intelligence announced in February that it had discovered malware in a computer network used by the military and blamed a state actor in China. Beijing strictly rejected the allegations and called them “baseless accusations”.

In 2018, the Netherlands expelled four suspected agents of the Russian military intelligence service GRU who were said to have attempted to carry out a hacker attack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Russia vehemently rejected the allegations and protested against the men’s expulsion.

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