Russia suspected of hacking Dutch prosecution service systems DutchNewsnl

pThere are strong indications that Russia was behind a cyber attack on the Dutch public prosecution departments internal systems justice ministry sources have told the ADppThe affected systems contain sensitive information on ongoing police investigations and court cases as well as personal data on staff The department has not yet said what if any information was accessedppThe first warning came in June when the National Cyber Security Centre NCSC issued an alert about a vulnerability in Citrix software used by the department However the weakness was not closed for another seven days and the prosecution department only took its systems offline on July 17ppppThat delay gave hackers at least three weeks to access the system the AD said The actual breach may have started even earlier if the flaw was exploited before the public warning was issuedppCybersecurity experts told the AD that hackers linked to both China and Russia have been targeting dozens of organisations and this now appears to include Dutch institutionsppRussia is considered more likely than China to be interested in the prosecution services files due to the MH17 investigation one expert saidppppIn 2017 Russias intelligence service SRU infiltrated Dutch police systems during the investigation into the downing of flight MH17 by a Russianbacked militia in eastern Ukraine in 2014ppThe Dutch military police are also examining possible war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine which would be another possible motive Pim Takkenberg of cybersecurity firm Northwave told the paperppRussian hackers are also suspected of being behind a separate attack on the Dutch police network last September during which workrelated details of tens of thousands of officers were stolenpp We could not provide the Dutch News service and keep it free of charge without the generous support of our readers Your donations allow us to report on issues you tell us matter and provide you with a summary of the most important Dutch news each dayppOur thanks to everyone who donates regularly to Dutch News It costs money to produce our daily news service our original features and daily newsletters and we could not do it without youppIf you have not yet made a donation or did so a while ago you can do so via these linksppThe DutchNewsnl teamppPlease help us making DutchNewsnl a better read by taking part in a short surveyp