NoName057(16) ‘punishes’ the Dutch government by sending the largest single DDoS burst at their public services sector
NoName057(16), the infamous hacktivist crew that has spent two years peppering Europe with nuisance floods, has turned its sights back on the Netherlands. Starting on Monday, the group launched three waves of DDoS traffic, knocking municipal portals in Apeldoorn, Nijmegen, Breda and Tilburg offline. By mid‑week the list had grown to 50‑plus targets, from local transport operators GVB and Arriva to national newspaper NRC. Pages either timed‑out or crawled for several hours, but no data was taken.
What made this week different?
The National Cyber Security Centre confirmed the activity is the largest single DDoS burst aimed at Dutch infrastructure since 2023. NoName057(16) claims it is ‘punishing’ the Dutch government for military aid to Ukraine. In reality, the attacks were textbook volumetric floods: UDP, SYN and TCP packets hurled at public websites to drum up headlines rather than cause long‑term damage.
A pattern that keeps repeating
This is hardly the first time Dutch services have faced DDoS pressure in 2025:
January – several universities and the government’s DigiD login portal were slowed by coordinated floods.
March – another DigiD outage disrupted citizens trying to file taxes online.
April – hosting provider Argeweb spent a week fending off repeated hits to its DNS platform, affecting customer sites nationwide.
Put together, these incidents show how public‑facing portals, from payments to transport timetables, remain easy PR targets for ideologically driven crews.
Why does it matter?
Even when sites return within hours, every outage chips away at public trust and forces IT teams into fire‑fighting mode. For local councils that now deliver services almost entirely online, repeated downtime means interrupted appointments, citizen frustration and extra support desk costs.
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