Cyberattack disrupts Belgian tax services before filing deadline

Belgium's finance ministry has taken its main online tax portal offline following a cyberattack, just days before a filing deadline for some taxpayers.

The Federal Public Service Finance (FPS Finance), which oversees taxation and other financial administration, said Wednesday that it was investigating the extent of the attack and had temporarily suspended access to MyMinfin, the country's main online platform for managing tax and financial affairs.

The shutdown comes ahead of an October 31 deadline for taxpayers reporting certain types of income. The agency said affected taxpayers would be given additional time to file their returns, with a revised deadline to be announced later.

Belgian authorities have not identified who was behind the attack or disclosed how the hackers may have gained access to government systems.

"Currently, there is no indication that a data breach has occurred or that any data has been stolen," FPS Finance said, adding that investigators were continuing to examine the possibility of data exposure.

The agency said it had taken the affected services offline as a precaution while specialists assessed the impact of the attack and carried out technical work to secure its systems. Several other government applications remained fully or partially operational.

The incident follows an earlier security alert this month that prompted Belgian authorities to temporarily shut down several government websites over concerns about a software vulnerability.

At the time, FPS Finance said it had taken many of its websites offline as a precaution because of an "international security issue," without providing further details.

The disruption coincided with a broader cybersecurity alert over two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a widely used programming language, that could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code on vulnerable servers.

Several government websites across Europe were temporarily shut down while administrators worked to address the vulnerabilities. Belgian news outlet The Brussels Times reported that FPS Finance websites were among those affected.

Belgium's national cybersecurity center said at the time that it had received no reports of successful attacks exploiting the flaws against Belgian websites.

It remains unclear whether Wednesday's cyberattack was connected to the earlier security alert. Belgian authorities have not publicly established any link between the incidents.