A massive DDoS knocked offline Belgian government websites

A massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack shut down Belgiums’ government websites, internal networks were also impacted.

A massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack hit most of the Belgium government’s IT network, according to the media the attack also knocked offline internal systems.

People attempting to visit websites hosted on the Belnet network were not able to reach them and were displayed error messages. The websites of the Belgium government and police services were also unavailable.

Belnet (or the Belgian National research and education network) is a Belgian internet provider for educational institutions, research centres, scientific institutes and government services. BELNET provides web services to higher education, federal departments and ministries, and international organisations.

“Due to a DDoS-attack some Belnet customers are experiencing connectivity problems. Our teams are working hard to mitigate the attacks and to restore connectivity. Belnet customers can contact our Service Desk at 02 790 33 00. We apologize for the inconvenience.” reads the status page published by Belnet.

Around 7.30 PM CET time, Belnet announced that its teams have successfully implemented several mitigation rules and that the effect of the attack were diminishing.

The Belgium Justice Department confirmed the unavailability of its online services through on Twitter.

TheRecord website reported that also Belgium’s COVID-19 vaccine reservation portal, which was hosted on Belnet, has been down for the entire day due to the DDoS attack.

Authorities are investigating the case, but at this time Belgium authorities did not attribute the DDoS attack to any specific threat actor.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, DDoS)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.