DUTCH GOVERNMENT WEBSITES TAKEN OFFLINE DUE TO RISK OF CYBERATTACK

THE HAGUE, OCTOBER 21 /SRNA - RIA Novosti/ - Several websites belonging to Dutch government institutions have been temporarily taken offline due to critical vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language, the Nu.nl news portal reported.

Several government services have been taken offline, including the NotuBiz platform, which is used by municipalities, provinces and water boards, as well as part of the SURF infrastructure used by universities, secondary schools, hospitals and research institutions.

The website of the Dutch Parliament’s House of Representatives has also stopped working.

The report added that neither the government’s digital identification system, DigiD, nor user pages on the MijnOverheid portal are currently available.

Similar problems were also reported in Finland today.

Around 70 per cent of websites worldwide use the PHP programming language, prompting organizations that rely on the software to receive urgent recommendations to temporarily take their websites offline.