'Malfunction' at Dutch defense ministry datacenter causing mass disruption

A currently unidentified “malfunction” at a datacenter used by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the Netherlands is causing widespread disruption across the country.

The incident, which began on Tuesday evening, has left civilian flights grounded due to the impact on air traffic control. It has also affected emergency-services communications, while civil servants at the MoD and other departments that share the same network are unable to access their government workstations. 

In a statement on social media, the MoD stated: “At the moment there are problems with IT networks at Defence. The cause is not yet known. Employees are experiencing login problems and in some cases there is an impact on service provision because telephone numbers are not reachable. A solution is being worked on.”

The MoD said it would provide updates on a page on its website. The Dutch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NL) described the incident as a “national outage” and said it was “working on the situational picture and interpretation” on Wednesday afternoon.

It warned on social media: “Due to a malfunction in a datacenter, several users of the datacenter and their IT services have been affected. As a result, it is not possible for the NCSC to send out security advice. We are working hard on a solution.”

The nature of the malfunction, including whether it has been caused by a cyberattack, is not yet clear. Travelers at Eindhoven Airport, which also serves as a military base, are being told their flights have been canceled. The country’s largest airport, Schiphol in Amsterdam, has not reported being affected.

A spokesperson for the MoD told the Associated Press that the “outage in one of our networks at the defense department” is also affecting other departments, as it is shared “by other parts of the Dutch government”

POLITICO quoted another spokesperson explaining that the impacted “network is connected to other ministries, but at this stage, it’s too early to speculate whether those disruptions are connected to the ministry.”