A DDoS attack blocks access to DigiD, the Dutch digital identity, for almost an hour and a half

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against DigiD, the system that citizens of the Netherlands use to identify themselves to online public services, prevented many users on Friday from accessing the Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) and MijnOverheid, according to NL Times, which cites the newspaper AD, and TPO. According to Logius, the Ministry of the Interior agency that runs DigiD, the attack began at 13:22, and the outage ended at around 14:49, according to Hart van Nederland cited by TPO.

The agencies' websites kept working, but DigiD was only partly available, according to TPO. The website Allestoringen received about 4,500 complaints about DigiD between 13:00 and 14:30 and almost 500 about the Tax Administration, when the norm in that interval is about twenty, according to both outlets. The deadline for filing the third-quarter VAT return ends this Saturday, and filing requires logging in.

Logius has reported the attack to the police, is investigating its causes and consequences and is checking whether user data have been stolen, according to NL Times and TPO. It is not known who is behind it and no one has claimed responsibility.

According to TPO, DigiD already suffered attacks of this kind on March 23 and July 9 this year. State Secretary Eric van der Burg said on October 7 that DigiD receives DDoS attacks daily and that this year there have been more with real impact, according to NL Times.